The therapeutic value of education: widening participation in action

The guest speaker, Joe Baden, runs Open Book, an award-winning outreach programme based at Goldsmiths, University of London. Targeted at mature students overcoming problems such as addiction and offending, the project helps participants to return to education and achieve their potential, thus changing their lives.

A passionate advocate of education as a therapeutic process and a means of self-discovery, Joe spoke honestly about his own experiences, growing up in Bermondsey, South London. His slide into truancy and delinquency culminated in serious crimes and a spell in both mental hospital and prison. “At the age of 16 my ambition was to be a bank robber and psychopath,” he said.

The event was attended by the Senior Tutor at Lucy Cavendish, Admissions tutors, School Liaison Officers and others involved in access across the University. It was coordinated by Sue Long, Student Outreach Officer at Lucy Cavendish.

Seminar attendees were encouraged to think about bridging the gulfs between different communities, including those that exist just a few streets apart, and create routes for people who are disadvantaged “by the accident of birth” but have the academic potential to access the best education on offer.

“We need to tackle the problems of alienation and build a level playing field without dumbing down. We need more opportunities for people to explore their academic potential. All too often what's on offer is limited to low level programmes based upon mythological but politically convenient stereotypes that patronise those with latent intelligence,” he said.

A series of probation education programmes and an access course offered Joe an alternative to a life that threatened to hit rock bottom. He gained a place at Goldsmiths to read history and graduated in 1998 with a 2.1, choosing Chartism in East London as a special focus. “For my mum, who is as straight as you can get, to see me graduate was the first opportunity she'd had to be proud of me,” he said.

In 2004 Joe set up a programme to foster those like him “at the extreme end of widening participation” who have the potential to study at advanced level. Open Book now supports around 120 mature students. It works in pupil referral units and prisons, and with further and higher education colleges in South East London Aspire Aimhigher Partnership. In addition, it is working to establish provision at the London School of Economics (LSE).

Until recently Joe had strongly negative perceptions of Cambridge, associating it with divisive privilege and social elitism – views he shared in a workshop held at the Labour Party Conference in 2007. He was invited to the University last term to meet staff and students working in outreach, access and widening participation.

Joe's visit to Cambridge prompted him to write an article for Guardian Unlimited (see sidebar) describing a dramatic turnaround of his opinions. In it, he confronted some of the common myths about Cambridge, concluding: “Perhaps, in the end, the biggest barrier to working class people going to Oxbridge has been bigots like me.”

The strength of Joe's message – that more should be done to increase access to our top institutions and that education is about “discovering the person you are” – lies in his personal experiences and in his understanding of research into the efficacy of higher level education as a route out of offending and addiction.

Susan Woodall, Academic Programme Manager at the Institute of Continuing Education, said: “Joe is about as real as widening participation gets - and that gives what he says complete authenticity. He doesn't compromise his views and doesn't spare middle-class blushes, which was very refreshing.”