ABSTRACT
Introduction Perhaps a ‘qualified’ success would be a better title to this chapter! This is not an indication of any lack of effort or imagination on the part of teachers or validating bodies, but an evaluation of the development of Access programmes within the parameters of educational policy, institutional frameworks and wider social structures. As Ball suggested some years ago, ‘…more means different…’ (Ball, 1990). There has certainly been more in terms of Access courses and an increase in student numbers in higher education (the APR for 18-year-olds reached around 30 per cent by the mid-1990s). Nationally, in the year 19992000, there were 1,031 Access to higher education programmes in 457 institutions, mostly in the further education sector, and 37,726 students registered (QAA, 2001). But how different is this provision from other courses that prepare students for higher education-and what signifies ‘difference’?
