Senior Widening Participation Officer

Location: Joseph Priestley Building

Birmingham City University, a large and diverse place to work, right in the heart of the UK’s second city. We have an exciting role to add to our Student Recruitment team, supporting the delivery of our Widening Participation activity. This role will suit an individual with some experience of working within the area of Widening Participation.

You will be responsible for delivery and administration of the University’s Widening Participation projects, with a focus in our Computing, Engineering and Built Environment faculty. The projects are diverse and exciting and involve working alongside young people of all ages, working to ensure that BCU is situated as a market leader in our Widening Participation (WP) recruitment activity. You will help to develop the position of BCU as “the University for Birmingham”. 

Senior Widening Participation Officers play a key role in ensuring our targeted outreach activities are effective and impactful in broadening awareness of higher education, and of BCU’s offer to prospective students from all backgrounds.  

This role plans, implements and delivers widening participation activity with school-aged children, both on and off campus, through initiatives including our Accelerate programme and partnerships with external organisations. The postholder will deliver activities, liaise with key contacts in schools and coordinate the work of BCU graduates embedded in our school partnerships across the region.

As part of evidencing the impact of our work, this role is crucial to setting up activities to be trackable and reportable, overseeing data collection for a range of projects and activities, including the development and provision of projects such as summer school, literacy tutoring and Aimhigher mentoring. 

• Deliver a number of pre and post 16 activities and events for schools and colleges, to help improve awareness of the University and raise aspirations towards higher education, with a particular focus on areas of low participation in HE and high levels of deprivation. 
• Lead on provision of indepth data and evaluation from identified schools to feed back to the Market Research and Analysis team. Contribute to the reports the team creates and ensure awareness is raised within the schools of the outcomes. 
• Ensure data collection and reporting meets OfS standards for evaluation and output monitoring, in line with the commitments made in our Access and Participation Plan.
• Communicate and work closely with colleagues in Communications to ensure BCU secures maximum possible external awareness of the impactful, and that our internal community is kept informed and involved in this area of our work.
• Coordinate, support and monitor the work of our BCU graduates working within the Accelerate schools and ensure they are supported in the provision of the Widening Particiation activity to learners.
• Working to the direction of the Assistant Director Student Recruitment and alongside another Senior WP Officer, to line manage junior staff, potentially including BCU ‘Grow Your Own’ graduates and/or a Widening Participation Officer.
• Represent the University in developing and maintaining relationships with staff in our partner schools, promoting the reputation of the University and ensuring good communication.
• Work closely with partner schools to ensure the delivery of our embedded graduates forms an effective and positive part of the curriculum, learning lessons and adapting where needed.

Closing Date: 23.59 hours BST on Thursday 19 September 2024

Interview Date: Friday 27 September 2024

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