Main profile

Director of Continuum

University of East London

London

United Kingdom

Summary biography: 

John is Professor at UEL. He is the Founding and current Chair of the Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE). As Director of Action on Access he jointly leads the National Coordination Team for Widening Participation funded by HEFCE.

In 2001 he was made a Professorial Fellow at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology (UMIST). He has been an influential regional and national figure on Widening Participation in HE and was a member of the NABCE National Group, established by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) in 1994, which paved the way for subsequent Widening Participation policy developments. He has been a member of a number of HEFCE groups and served for example as Vice Chair for the Access Advisory Partnership and was also a member of the National Steering Group for Aimhigher: Partnerships for Progression. He was a pioneer of the Assessment of Prior Experiential Learning (APEL) in the UK and chaired the SEEC APEL network for a number of years.

In addition to his extensive UK experience John also has wide international experience as result of his keynotes and conference inputs and involvement in European research and development projects and was an active council member of the European Universities Continuing Education Network (EUCEN). In recent years he has been working extensively in Sweden, advising government departments, organisations and universites across Sweden on widening participation and access to HE. He was also instrumental in the establishment of the Swedish widening participation network, INCLUDE.

He has written extensively and is the author of a range of publications on APEL, Lifelong Learning, Widening Participation and Credit Accumulation and Transfer and a member of the Editorial Board of the Journal for Adult and Continuing Education. He has longstanding experience as an external examiner to doctoral level in universities throughout the UK. He also led the BBC Inquiry into broadcasting and HE, the findings and recommendations from which were published in the report 'BBC Education and Higher Education'.