Widening participation? Barriers to learning for manual grade staff in higher education institutions

In a survey conducted across eleven universities in the north of England, attendance figures for manual grade staff attending internal university training programmes was found to be significantly below that of other employee groups. This is unsatisfactory from an equal opportunity perspective since the ethos of a university should encompass all employees. It is also unsatisfactory from a business perspective because all staff need to possess the requisite skills and be able to use them to maximum effect. Furthermore, manual grade staff frequently interact with students and the quality of this interaction may have implications for student satisfaction and course completion rates. This paper investigates the levels of training attendance by manual grade staff at two universities and discusses three categories of barriers to learning identified by Hillage and Aston (2001). A survey of manual grade staff was conducted and supplemented with a number of semi- structured interviews. Forty-four barriers were ranked and the first ten are considered in more detail. Recommendations are made to address some of the equality and business issues regarding the barriers to learning.