. . . . . our hard-working, indispensible FACE Administrator, Jackie Leach, is currently in the
process of sending out 2008 FACE calendars to members. They're on their way, guys . . . . .

To facilitate the maximum opportunity to share evidence, experience, and ideasrelating to the conference theme, there are two types of workshop / paper sessions: themed workshop sessions and cross-cutting thematic papers that examine issues across academic boundaries.

Workshop sessions will be grouped according to indicative broad themes: Mental Health and Lifelong Learning, Rural & Coastal Areas/Regions, Care leavers, Work-Based Learning, Hard to Reach Groups.

These are genuinely indicative themes only. As is routine with the FACE Annual Conference, there will be a book published of selected conference papers.

Call for Proposals  Do you want to facilitate a workshop / present a paper at FACE 2008? Download an Abstract submission form www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=4982

The first submission deadline is 25th January 2008

The final submission deadline is 30th March 2008 

Online booking will be available in the New Year

For further information please email face2008@yorksj.ac.uk

More Information is Available Online

Residential Package & Conference Fees
www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=5035

Non-residential Package & Conference Fees
www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=5036

About York and York St John University www2.yorksj.ac.uk/default.asp?Page_ID=5047

The Development Planning Day at
University of Westminster, Dec 2007

Member Services Group

The brief for this group

• Strategies for, and sources of, new members
• The retention of existing members
• What services should we be offering?
• Web Services
• Seminar programme: number/costs
• Annual Conference and publication
• Research Support

Finance Group

The brief for this group

• Forecast income/expenditure
• Identify income sources/expenditure items
• Estimate financial growth
• Provide a financial plan
• Auditing

Contact: Mike Goodwin m.g.goodwin@wlv.ac.uk

Administration and External Group

The brief for this group

• Membership processing
• Membership updating
• Mailings and information
• External links (UK and international)
• Lobbying

Contact: Mike Hill  R.Hill@kingston.ac.uk

Ted Stepp is an Instructor of developmental English at the post-secondary College of the Marshall Islands. The Republic of the Marshall Islands is a small independent island nation, formerly part of the US Trust Territory of the Pacific Islands.

Ted has attended the last two FACE conferences and was a panel member in a roundtable forum at FACE 2007. He has made a big impression upon FACE colleagues and has become known affectionately as “our most far-flung member”!

As a member-oriented organisation FACE would like to invite individual colleagues to have their say on any issue of concern in UK education policy and practice. This is a purely personal point of view and should not be thought to represent any institution, organisation, or official body. To have your say, email James.Tate@uwe.ac.uk

Our first contribution is from Graeme Atherton from the University of Westminster, who says:

We often talk in widening access of it being involved in a ‘long term’ challenge. But how seriously do we take this point?  I would like to kick off this series of FACE thinkpieces by asking how we are going to ensure that if it is a long term challenge, we are here long enough to meet it. There are a lot of conferences in widening access. It is rare to attend one that really resonates with you but that happened to me recently. Just before Christmas I heard Dr. Arnold Mitchem of the Council for Education Opportunities in the USA give his perspective on the challenges facing us in the widening access community in the UK. His organisation has a budget of over $800m and has managed to sustain widening access work across the USA since the 1960s. He explained how. At heart, Dr. Mitchem argued that widening access is a political issue and that it is only by taking the responsibility ourselves as practitioners and embracing this idea that widening access work can survive. He argued that we need to organise, agitate and campaign if we want what we believe in to happen. I could only think how right he was. Widening access will always be a contested issue and we need to fight for hearts, minds and money to compete in the contest. This is difficult for practitioners. We become bogged down in internecine debates and the seeming constant, often conflicting, edicts from funding councils, institutions and politicians. We are short on resources, job security and time. But it is space that has to be found. Presenting our view, making ourselves heard, putting the politics into what we do is the only way to counteract these pressures.

The question is then whether the widening access community have the capabilities and the will to organise, pool our strength and start to try and define the agenda. What is our voice? Do we have one? If we have, is it loud enough and saying the right things? As this is the first FACE thinkpiece, I would like to use it to start this debate. FACE is your organisation. What role do you think it should have here? What would you like FACE to say and how? If we want to be around in the 2030s we have to act now. I await your ideas.