Teaching grant boost for Teesside

The University of Teesside is among the winners in the new funding allocations announced today for English universities.

The University has been told it is to get a cash increase of around 8 per cent for its teaching grant for the next academic year - an extra £2.3m.

This follows the announcement in the recent Government white paper on the future of higher education which indicated that more support would be going to universities that encourage widening participation and support non-traditional students.

The University of Teesside has a national reputation for widening access and has won a number of major awards for its pioneering Meteor programme. This sees staff and students engaging with primary schools in central and east Middlesbrough to encourage them to raise their aspirations and see that higher education is within their grasp.

Teesside also has among the highest numbers of students from state schools - 98% and a higher-than-average number of students from working class backgrounds - 38%.

Today's announcement from the Funding Council was welcomed by a University of Teesside spokesman.

He said: "We are very pleased with the increase in our teaching grant, and particularly welcome the positive response to our bid for additional student numbers. The extra cash will be a further major boost to our work in widening participation and support student retention."

Among the specific areas that the extra cash will go at Teesside is the development of a further 122 foundation degree places in partnership with its local network of further education colleges in the University of Teesside Partnership. The University of Teesside was among the first to pilot foundation degrees with a fd in Chemical Technology. This year fds have been added in health and public service management.

The Times Higher Education Supplement today produced a table of English university funding allocations and this showed Teesside's teaching grant going up by 8.5% to £31,839,747.

The University's Centre for Lifelong Learning and the Student Support section offer a range of advice and guidance to both prospective and current students and parents.

This ranges from Discovery Days in all the main academic disciplines and a comprehensive range of campus and school visits; the extensive use of students as mentors on a range of schemes from Meteor (which deals with children from the ages of ten to 14) to the Passport Programme (which deals with sixth-form and FE students).

Free advice meetings are also offered by Student Support to potential students. These last half-an-hour and cover all aspects of student funding.

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