Head of University Partnerships
The Access Project, United Kingdom
Job Description
- Applications close: 9am Wednesday 19 May 2021 (Please note that late applications cannot be accepted)
- Salary: 31,000 - 35,000p.a. (+ 3,000p.a.London Weighting if applicable)
- Contract: Full-time, permanent
- Hours: 37.5 hours per week (please note that we are able to offer flexibility on working hours and are open to discussion with candidates),
- Location: London or Birmingham (with regular travel to London for meetings). Remote working initially until staff return to office-based working.
- Interviews: Week commencing 24th May (TBC)
- Start date: ASAP
- Function: Partnership Team
- Reporting to: Partnerships Director
Requirements
About The Access Project
In the UK today, students from the most advantaged backgrounds are six times more likely to make it to a top university compared to their least advantaged peers. To change this, The Access Project supports students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access top universities, through a unique combination of tuition and in-school mentoring. We work with them to make good applications, get the grades and transition to university.
Our approach works: our students are more than twice as likely to place at top universities compared to similar peers.
Through the COVID crisis, we have remained student-focussed and continued our support by rapidly moving all provision online. In autumn 2020, we were selected as a Tuition Partner for the highly competitive National Tutoring Programme, in recognition of the quality of our work. This partnership has enabled us to expand and we now serve 1,700 students in London, the East and West Midlands and Bradford. As the country emerges from COVID, tackling educational disadvantage is an urgent social challenge - a challenge we aim to meet by expanding our footprint and reaching more students than ever before.
Why we need you
The Access Project has a growing number of partnerships with a number of universities built on shared strategic aims: universities’ desire to make their institutions more accessible to students from different socioeconomic backgrounds, and The Access Project’s commitment to helping bright students from disadvantaged backgrounds secure places at top universities. We want to work with more universities to deliver activity with young people in their target geographies, opening up opportunities for funding and broader support from universities.
This is a proactive role that will require the creation of new opportunities and ways of working. It will suit a self-starter with an entrepreneurial attitude who enjoys establishing new relationships. The successful candidate will demonstrate good working knowledge of the higher education landscape and relevant policy areas.
Main duties and responsibilities
Strategy development
- Work with the Partnerships Director to implement and review our university partnerships strategy.
Proposal development
- Work with the Partnerships Director to develop university fundraising offers and proposals.
- Negotiate multi-year contracts with universities.
Lead generation and awareness raising
- Create new opportunities for university partnerships, establishing relationships with decision makers and using TAP's networks effectively.
- Raise TAP's presence in the Widening Participation and Access sector, working with our communications team to create and identify opportunities to raise our profile. This would include attending conferences, speaking at or arranging appropriate TAP speakers at conferences, and identifying sector awards that will add to our credentials.
- Work with the Partnerships Director and Communications team to create materials, both on and offline, that will reach and attract university widening participation audiences.
Account management and stewardship
- Work effectively across The Access Project to pool knowledge and connections to universities, consulting relevant stakeholders on decisions about funding and volunteering opportunities.
- Account manage a portfolio of university partnerships, ensuring excellent stewardship and reporting.
- Maintain a database of all our university partnerships and key project milestones.
Develop expertise
- Keep up to date with Higher Education and Widening Participation policy and landscape.
Cross-organisation contribution
- Model the tone and behavioural expectations of The Access Project amongst st