I went out for a family lunch on Sunday. It was one of those long, lingering lunches, sitting in the shade of the trees while conversation meandered from one topic …
The Going from a World We Know
It is graduation season in the UK. My social media feeds are full of certificates, gowns, hoods, proud families, and photographs taken on university lawns. Graduates are celebrating the culmination …
Language Matters Part Two – Labelling the People who Learn
In my previous blog post, Language Matters, I argued that the success of the Lifelong Learning Entitlement depends not only on funding and pedagogy, but also on communication. This led …
Designing for real student lives: introducing a toolkit for leaders
What happens when curriculum is designed for continuity, but students’ lives are not? Across Higher Education, there is growing emphasis on lifelong learning, modular provision, and more flexible pathways into …
Can Universities Create Belonging on Their Own?
Belonging has become one of the most frequently discussed concepts in Higher Education. We know that it matters. Students who experience a sense of belonging are more likely to engage …
Language Matters
There is a new report on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement (LLE), this time from the Lifelong Education Institute: The Missing Middle. Its recommendations focus on progression pathways, funding incentives, flexible …
Why Belonging Matters,and Why it is Not Enough
Belonging is in the news again. Recent commentary from Wonkhe has highlighted how students who do not feel they belong often report that many other aspects of university life are …
In the garden of wisdom […] she handed the seeds to me
This is the speech I was delighted to give recently at the Award Ceremony in Oxford’s Sheldonian theatre, for Oxford Lifelong Learning: I recently came across a poem by Rosemerry …
5 hot topics on the Lifelong Learning Entitlement from The Spinnaker Group
On 26-27th March, Oxford Lifelong Learning (where I am currently undertaking a Visiting Fellowship) kindly hosted The Spinnaker Group’s first meeting of 2026. Over 20 higher education representatives from the …
Belonging is not the same for everyone: using the BBB survey with different groups of students
How the Being, Belonging, Becoming framework can help surface hidden assumptions in programme design One of the questions I am often asked about the Being, Belonging, Becoming (BBB) framework is …