Critical conversations on Belonging in Higher Education

This roundtable event brings together students from local state schools and UCL, together with guest speakers with expertise from education, policy, and academia to explore the hidden cost of transitions from school to university. The event emerges from collective anti-racist and EDI work in the Anthropology department, and particularly work with students on the module ‘Peopling the Gap: A Multimodal Exploration of Race, Education, and Violence’.

School to university transitions are often presented as a seamless or taken for granted process, yet for many young people, experiences of schooling leave a lasting impact. In England, conventional systems of learning entail competitive exam pressure, punitive and exclusionary systems of behaviour management, and forms of structural and symbolic educational violence. The impact of these systems is rarely acknowledged in university. Against a backdrop of the neo-liberalisation of higher education where instrumentality and competition dominate, little time is dedicated to relational work of understanding how student intersectional positionalities and personal histories inform educational experiences, with university systems often themselves re-inscribing forms of educational violence in racialised, gendered, classed and ableist ways. Although initiatives exist to integrate young people into university culture, for example, through widening participation programs and EDI events aimed at enhancing belonging, too often these efforts are provided as an ‘add on’ to university life as opposed to embedded into pedagogy and culture by design. Critically engaging with these themes, we ask:

• How can we center student personal histories in teaching and learning?
• How might we design school and university systems of education otherwise to address entrenched forms of discrimination, oppression and exclusion?
• What is belonging, and how could this be fostered with our students in everyday practice and acts of care in higher education?

Everyone welcome, but spaces are limited so please sign up to attend! Refreshments will be provided for all attendees registered via Eventbrite. Event contact:

• Raphael Asoegwu, Local State School
• Mahi Kakani, Local State School
• Becky Fay, UCL Anthropology BSc
• Zoya Bamjee, UCL Anthropology BSc

Graded is a creative and critical podcast that turns the tables on traditional school evaluation by investigating the approaches of the Michaela Community School through storytelling, research, and debate. Michaela acts as a starting point for us to consider broader critical questions about schooling

and education policy. Graded holds up a mirror to Michaela’s approach, inviting listeners to rethink what it means to assess education. Listen here.

Freya is an educator and researcher with an interest in social justice, democracy, and inclusion in education. They have worked in a variety of education spaces including schools, higher education, and the charity sector. Their doctoral research at KCL examined the meaning of democracy in education and its significance for inclusion and social justice in post-16 settings like FE and HE. Freya currently works for Arts Emergency, a mentoring charity that supports underrepresented young people to access careers in the arts and humanities. Freya is also working with the All-Party Parliamentary Group for Schools, Learning, and Assessment on their inquiry into the role of schools in supporting democratic citizenship in anticipation of the lowering of the voting age to 16.

Lorraine is a Practice Improvement Advisor in Knowledge & Practice Development at the CSA Centre. She is a qualified teacher with almost 30 years’ experience in education, from key stage one to four. Starting out in mainstream schools, Lorraine moved into the special education sector where she worked extensively with children and young people who experienced abuse and trauma. During the course of her career, she has worked as an education advisor, headteacher of a Local Authority virtual school for children in care and then as the headteacher for three special schools in the South-East. This included day and residential school settings, pupil referral units and a secure school – each making dedicated provisions for children with social, emotional, and mental health needs.

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