New book offers Access students a 'guide to success'

A former Access to Higher Education (AHE) student has written a new book which offers students a 'guide to success' on their AHE diploma courses.

The Access to Higher Education Handbook is published this month by Sage. It leads readers through a range of advice on course structures, assessments, research, writing, referencing, critical thinking, study skills and digital skills, as well as planning for, and transitioning into, higher education – advising them to 'dream big, look carefully [and] choose wisely' as they endeavour to 'learn, develop and achieve [their] goals'.

Along the way, it includes practical tasks and knowledge checks, and is interspersed with observations from AHE students reflecting on their experiences of their studies.

Its author Zoë Chapman graduated with a degree in Biochemistry after completing her AHE diploma - and went on to teach Biology on an AHE programme. She is an academic at the Open University and a member of QAA's Access Regulation and Licensing Committee.

This summer, QAA marked the registration of its first million students onto Access to Higher Education Diploma courses since it started managing the scheme for the recognition and quality assurance of this provision in 1997.

In his foreword to the new book, QAA's Director of Quality Assurance Services Rob Stroud points out that the AHE diploma 'changes lives' by providing a 'bridge for adult learners seeking entry into higher education courses when they may lack the traditional qualifications often quoted as entry requirements'. The diploma is, he says, 'long-established and widely recognised by universities' and 'caters to individuals from diverse backgrounds and with varying experiences in their lives'.

He adds that the book's author herself 'epitomises the drive we often see from Access to HE students – they are tenacious and motivated, and also want to support others as part of a learning community'.

Zoë is certainly passionately committed to the promotion of widening participation through the Access diploma – and to supporting students through the opportunities it offers.

She says she wanted to write a guide that consolidated the best knowledge and advice about AHE, one written for adults in language that anyone can understand.

'It should be like I'm talking to you as a peer, having a conversation in the classroom,' she explains. 'Everything I wanted to get in I've squashed into this book.'

She says that her own Access studies affected her life profoundly.

'Before I started the course, I'd had no direction as to what I wanted to do with my life,' she recalls. 'I had no goals or ambitions. I felt quite helpless about what the future looked like.'

She'd considered going into medicine but had tried a placement and fainted at the first sight of blood. Then a conversation with one of her tutors on the Access programme – a retired university lecturer who wore 'the worst socks in the world' – changed all that.

'He asked if I'd ever thought about teaching – and said I should,' she says. 'That's what sent me into the world of academia, which I'd never expected at all.'

She has since worked in HE, FE and secondary schools, taught on apprenticeship programmes and developed corporate training and CPD.

'I feel very privileged to have worked in so many education sectors,' she says. 'All that experience has reaffirmed to me how unique and important Access is, what high quality provision it is, and how pivotal it can be in someone's life.

'I wouldn't be where I am today without Access.'