Here are some frequently asked questions from teachers and advisors in Schools and Colleges.
If your question is not answered in our FAQs, please contact us.
Unless stated, all of our activity is free of charge.
We work with a number of target schools in London and beyond, but we encourage enquiries from all schools and colleges. In order to support informed decisions about Higher Education, we primarily target students from Year 11 to Year 13 and their key influencers, including their parents, carers, teachers, and advisers.
As part of our commitment to supporting students under-represented in backgrounds, we deliver a range of additional targeted activity for students in Key Stages 3 and 4 to defined schools within target boroughs in London and Essex. These boroughs are identified using publically available national data on free school meals, areas of high deprivation and rates of participation in higher education.
Partnerships
Queen Mary has official long-standing partnerships with three local schools through our sponsorship of the University Schools Trust and Draper's Academy. The University is not currently looking to partner with any other schools.
However, our team are keen to continue to build relationships with teachers and staff members in schools. Building relationships with teachers and staff members in our local schools is crucial to support students and ensure anyone who is able to flourish at Queen Mary can join us, irrespective of their background.
Please be advised that no parking for visitors is available at any of our campuses, this includes for coaches and buses.
There are a limited number of parking spaces for Blue Badge holders, but we advise you to contact us as soon as possible to ensure availability.
Our Widening Participation Travel Bursary aims to bring students who have specific characteristics typically under-represented in higher education on to campus for Open Days, Taster Days and Offer Holder Days. Applications are open to individuals who fulfil the eligibility criteria.
If you are a teacher or advisor wanting to apply for a Groups Travel Bursary to support a group of eligible students visiting campus, then please email the Student Recruitment and Widening Participation Team on education-liaison@qmul.ac.uk with full details of your enquiry.
Safeguarding training is provided for all our outreach staff and student ambassadors as part of our approach to recruitment and training.
In order to comply with government policy, school, college or community group, staff must supervise Student Ambassadors, unless previously agreed, in writing with Queen Mary staff. Where we have agreed to Student Ambassadors engaging in unsupervised regulated activity, we will supply the student(s) name and further confirmation that they been subject to an enhanced Disclosure and Barring Check.
To support Schools and Colleges with the identification of staff our staff and ambassadors will carry a Queen Mary lanyard and ID with them.
A copy of our DBS guidance is available upon request, along with the wider University safeguarding policy.
To take part in our Widening Participation activities students must meet one or more of the below criteria:
*A younger carer is someone age 18 or under who helps look after a relative who has a condition, such as a disability, illness, mental health condition or a drug or alcohol problem.
**Estranged means that you are not supported by/not in communication with both of your parents.
The majority of our activities are open to eligible students from any state school pan-London.
GCSE and/or A level requirements are applied to some activities.
Copies of our Access and Participation Plans are available using the links provided below:
QMUL 2020-21 to 2024-25 Access and Participation Plan [PDF 770KB]
QMUL 2019-20 Access and Participation Plan [PDF 918KB]
QMUL 2018-19 Access Agreement [PDF 582KB]
QMUL 2017-18 Access Agreement [PDF 618KB]
To evaluate the impact of our work we use the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT). Information about the students who take part in our activities is recorded in this secure database to monitor the progression of Students to Higher Education. In addition, we utilise a range of approaches to qualitative evaluation in order to measure the impact of our activities.
We have a dedicated webpage to explain the Widening Participation Data Protection Privacy Notice.
For further information on how we use student data to inform the evaluation of our activities, please review the Data Protection Notice for Outreach Activities.