London And Global Perspectives

Introduction

The study of social life and factors touching on the academic growth of young people in the society is extremely gaining attention across the world. While the study looks at the extend or the rate at which young people fail to join the University of West London, the trend cuts across other parts of the world such as Australia, Chile and Mexico among others. Some of the factors cited against failure to enrol for university education include the costs involved in attaining higher education, family issues, confidence, and the preference of having a job than pursuing higher education. Sometimes, young people end up less ambitious and lack dreams of pushing for higher education. Other factors include loss of interest, personal difficulties, disability, cultural constraints, and academic issues. With all the factors in place, the considerable approaches meant to encourage youths to enrol for higher education are expected to contain at least one of the favourable characteristics that can motivate youths to enrol to University of West London.

Objectives of the Analysis

The following are the objectives of the analysis: To determine events that can motivate young people to pursue higher education To assess the impact of the outreach team activities and approaches provided

Dimensions and their characteristics

The problem at hand calls for a check on the integrative review of essential intervention. Types of the programs to support young people in enrolling for higher education are expected to take different dimensions. The first dimension includes the personal or affective dimension, which includes tutoring, individualized methods, retreats that are designed to build self-esteem, classroom-based discussions, as well as individual counselling (Smink and Reimer 2017). All these methods aim at building a better attitude towards higher education among youths in London and its outskirts. However, some of the methods under the personal or affective dimension can be turned into potential approaches, which can also be recommended for the UWL case. The second dimension is academic dimension, which involves facilitation of special academic courses, tutoring and individualized methods as well (Price and Tovar 2014). Some of the approaches under this dimension are similar to those involved under the affective dimension. This means that the methods can serve more than one dimension depending on the situation at hand. The third dimension encompasses family outreach where home visits and feedbacks from parents are normally encouraged (Parker et al. 2017). The fourth dimension is the school structure, which encompasses such approaches like homeroom teacher, reduction of the class size and development of alternatives to different courses. The last dimension takes the work related scope, which invests in service programs and vocational training.

Approaches
Evening programs

The key approach under consideration includes the evening programs, which still falls under the evening activities. The programs are supposed to be initiated by the University of West London, because it masters the schedule and understands the needs of students. It is of note that this approach takes care of students who are working and cannot leave their jobs to attend classes during the normal hours. While the program consumes less than two hours, it is also cheaper than the programs run during the day. The aspect of affordability accommodates needy students who are likely to have less money to pay for higher education (Springer and Sale 2017). The evening program is said to take care of a special group of young people believed to have encountered different life experiences, and a range of circumstances that must have blocked their efforts to join higher learning institutions such as UWL. The group is likely to contain people who must have dropped out of school or stopped pursuing higher education more than five years ago. Some even have families and find it intolerable to leave their jobs in the pursuit of higher education. Therefore, evening program is a subject to analysis as far as factors bolstering its impact and challenges affecting its performance are concerned.

Alternative education programs

Apart from the evening programs, UWL can work on alternative education programs. The approach addresses the affective and academic dimension where the institution is engaged in taking care of even personal issues affecting young people from underprivileged families (Wells et al. 2015). The approach can be analysed along the behavioural or academic problems that must have barred some of them from enrolling for higher education. In such cases, the group can be moved out of the regular program and placed in an environment that allows additional counselling, stress management, behaviour control and time and skill management. It is speculated that additional or alternative programs can attract more young people into universities because of assurance of academic persistence, motivation, and self-esteem. With such promising

outcomes, UWL remains the backbone of the progress and growth of the education-related programs that enhance professional development to all.

Family Outreach

The third approach under analysis is the family outreach, which doubles as a dimension as mentioned earlier. The family outreach initiatives are analogous to marketing campaigns that dig deep into the demographic profile of the potential clients. The initiative remains a prime project to be implemented by the outreach team. The initiative puts more focus on the personal environment that undermines chances of young people to pursue their professional and career path. The family outreach or home visits delve into perceptions, attitudes, and behaviours that have an impact on the probability of enrolling into the university (Chappell et al. 2015). Perhaps, personal factors such as negative self-perceptions, low aspirations, and low self-esteem are thought to be solvable issues especially when the right approach is improvised.
Notably, cases of low self-esteem are more profound among youths from underprivileged families that struggle to meet basic needs and fail to support family members in terms of academic achievement. Family outreach, as served by the outreach team, aims at restoration of confidence among young people meant to believe that higher education is only reserved for few people. The conditions of some families need attention which makes it necessary to have an outreach team in place to serve the purpose of redefining the meaning of life and the reality of

dreams (Sleeter and Carmona 2016). Family circumstances are sometimes characterized by unemployment, illness, and divorce among other risk factors. Such a background is critical and can have an irreversible impact if no measures are put in place to control it. The outreach team can be thought to be part of the solution if proper strategies are put in place.

Individual Counselling

Related to family outreach is the scope of individual counselling, which is part of the activities that can help young people to build their own careers. While individual counselling seems to tackle personal issues, it goes all the way unlocking sociological factors that have an impact on the personal progress. Some of these factors include the low income barriers and colour which impede the social capacity to explore avenues and opportunities that can promote value (Somers and Haider 2017). Individual counselling involves a one-on-one talk that touches on personal life and the hope of working hard. Individual counselling looks at the value a person has, the scope of self-understanding, thoughts and experiences as well as a possible future based on perceptions. In most cases, individual counselling applies to persons from poor backgrounds, or the disabled who do not share same privileges enjoyed by normal people.

Some of the youths are believed to have stopped struggling for their career goals due to addictive behaviours, mental issues, failure to plan for live and disappointments from people close to a person. For these reasons, individual counselling remains the sound approach that can solve or help young people to gain confidence and consider enrolling into the UWL. Individual counselling should not discriminate the ones undergoing stress or not, the ones with poor background or not and the ones with disabilities or not. This is because a significant degree of those who fail to further their education have an able background.

Group Retreats and Picnics

In addition, group retreats and picnics pave way for open discussions. Sometimes, events such as picnics provide a freer atmosphere thereby giving challenge to the young generation who fail to note the significance of university education. It is of note that most of the traditional-age students lack the power of relationships, which makes them take personal decisions that can ruin their professional life. Students still need the family’s attention as well as involvement, and this should be realized even after enrolling for higher education. For some of the youths, the parental contact is very poor. With such poor partnerships, students’ autonomy is in danger (Kember 2016). Making use of retreats or picnics will be a significant activity by the outreach team in bringing back the lost family contact among some of the young people in the society.

Through picnics, most of the young people get a chance of developing their own network comprising of close friends. The network will be advantageous in terms of providing peer counselling, impact personal decisions, support group achievement, as well as develop solutions that can help an individual or the entire group. Retreats provide a freer atmosphere and can be used in stress management especially when some of the young people fail to disclose their status or problems they are going through (Schargel and Smink 2014). On the other hand, retreats and picnics can be extended to families. This can also be integrated into family outreach where retreats pave way for close partnerships thereby allow exchange of ideas, and fruitful discussions. The former additionally creates a platform that convinces families to undertake volunteer service programs.

SWOT analysis

The consultancy project seemingly encountered strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats at the same time. First, the outreach team allows every member to access information. This means that the team had a robust network with a better planning process that informed on the updates during and after the outreach activities. The meetings and the print media offers a platform that allows every member to make contributions towards supporting young people in getting back to school or advance their academic life in the university. The team exercises equity and opportunity in the sense that motivates each member to work even harder in achieving key objectives. However, the project also encountered a number of weaknesses. The team was understaffed with only two members carrying out the duties. This means ineffective execution of duties both on and off the field. The team also underutilized the social media platforms, which led to low turnout of the potential members. This is an indication of insignificant communication skills, which might have extended the message in unclear way. The idea of involving the university also led to unequal contribution from the university side, which led to unexpectedly low outcomes. The absence of means of evaluation never showed chances of young people turning up for the events and retreats.

However, various opportunities can be identified from the efforts of UWL and outreach team. The latter has an opportunity of utilizing more advertising platforms to boost membership. Instead of using Whatsapp and Facebook as the key platforms, the team can as well utilize additional platforms such as twitter with the interest tapping more millennial. Instead of conducting family outreach, the team should train the members on counselling, which can attract more membership from youths. Apart from the opportunities, the project is likely to face threats in the course of action. Hostility from some of the family members can ruin the efficiency of the outreach team. Some of the family members may need urgent help such as financial aid, which the outreach team may not have.

Conclusion

While UK seems to have registered a significant number of youths who never enrol for higher education, the attention towards this issue has amounted to paramount levels. The report has first touched on different dimensions approaches can take regarding motivation of young people to enrol for higher education. Some of them include the affective dimension, family outreach and the work related dimension. Apart from the dimensions and their characteristics, the report has expounded on different approaches indicating possible challenges and risk factors in each. Some of them include family outreach, evening programs, and individual counselling among others. Among the approaches, individual counselling is thought to be the most appropriate and more applicable given that some of individuals may not be willing enough to disclose their status in open forums. Besides, it can be applied by both the University of West London and the outreach team.

Recommendations

While the outreach team aims at pushing students to advance their education, the team has to consider the convenient approach it can use. Among all the approaches, the team can make the fundamental use of the family outreach, which convinces a person and the associated background

Take a deeper dive into Literacy Development in Early Years Settings with our additional resources.

References

• Chappell, S.L., O’Connor, P., Withington, C. and Stegelin, D.A., 2015. A meta-analysis of dropout prevention outcomes and strategies. The Center for Educational Partnerships at Old Dominion University and the National Dropout Prevention Center at Clemson.
• Kember, D., 2016. Understanding the nature of motivation and motivating students through teaching and learning in higher education.
• Parker, L., Newton, J. and Cobia, F.J., 2017. Perceptions of Education Professionals Regarding Barriers to Implementation of Early Intervention Programs for Dropout Prevention.
• Price, D.V. and Tovar, E., 2014. Student engagement and institutional graduation rates: Identifying high-impact educational practices for community colleges. Community College Journal of Research and Practice, 38(9), pp.766-782.
• Schargel, F. and Smink, J., 2014. Strategies to help solve our school dropout problem. Routledge.
• Sleeter, C. and Carmona, J.F., 2016. Un-standardizing curriculum: Multicultural teaching in the standards-based classroom. Teachers College Press. Smink, J. and Reimer, M., 2017. Rural School Dropout Issues: Implications for Dropout Prevention. Strategies and Programs. National Dropout Prevention Center/Network.
• Somers, M.A. and Haider, Z., 2017. A Tiered Approach to Dropout Prevention: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation of Communities In Schools.
• Springer, J.F. and Sale, E., 2017. The Dropout Prevention Mentor Project: Delivering Unexpected Messages Through Policy Research. In Applied Policy Research (pp. 172- 190). Routledge.
• Wells, R., Gifford, E., Bai, Y. and Corra, A., 2015. A network perspective on dropout prevention in two cities. Educational Administration Quarterly, 51(1), pp.27-57.