Dr Bryan Burford as project lead with Paul Paes, Gill Vance (all SME) and Felicity Hunter from Faculty Office have been awarded 2014/15 ULTSEC innovation funding to investigate “Widening participation: Developing a participatory workshop to encourage applications to medical school”.

Widening participation (WP) – encouraging recruitment from underrepresented social groups – is a nationwide priority in higher education, particularly for healthcare professions. Newcastle University has one of the lowest rates of WP applications nationally.  This project aims to increase the proportion of attendees at existing WP events who then apply to Newcastle Medical School.  Student interns recruited from the MBBS programme will develop and deliver a participatory workshop with school pupils. This will identify barriers to application, and allow pupils to generate their own solutions, feeding into short- and long-term revision of processes.  Evaluation will include attitudinal measures, and future application figures.