Rewards of the sunshine season

Students enrolling for summer schools find that the courses can change their lives

Universities are like windmills," says Jean Baxter, summer school co-ordinator at Leicester University, "we never close." As soon as universities finish processing the year's intake of undergraduates at the end of the summer term, they turn their minds to preparing for the influx of summer school students. Summer schools are good for universities because they provide extra revenue, and ensure that facilities are used throughout the year.

But increasingly, summer schools are also helping universities to address the challenge of widening participation: encouraging new learners to try out university life, whether they are teenagers, middle-aged returners or career-changers, or retired people looking for a new interest.

The summer school is an ideal vehicle to attract such learners. First, they have all the connotations of ease and summer sunshine. But there is serious work to be done, too, and a summer school course can be an excellent way of accomplishing a great deal in a short time.

Leicester University is part of a consortium (including De Montfort, Loughborough, Derby, and Lincoln), which devotes its summer school period to wooing future generations of university students. With money from the Higher Education Funding Council, the universities invite 16-year-olds to spend a week sampling life on campus, including lectures, assignments, skills development, and, of course, social life.

"The students don't have an easy time, but they have a good time," says Baxter. "It's an enormous confidence-builder, and the whole process helps them make choices later on. We just try to give them that taste of learning, and the sense of personal achievement that goes with it: there's no feeling like it."

The University of Middlesex, now one of the largest summer school providers of its kind, began nine years ago with 200 summer school students and 20 courses. This year it will offer 120 short courses to about 1,500 students. At the summer school, undergraduates from the United Kingdom rub shoulders with international students, adult returners and professionals, as well as interested members of the local community.

About 60 per cent of those enrolling are already students at Middlesex University who may be wanting to brush up on a course module, get ahead for the next academic year, or try out a different subject. Other students, from the UK or abroad, may take an undergraduate module at Middlesex over the summer and then transfer the credits to their own university.

Some courses offer valuable professional development to those already in careers. Jacqui Leigh, for instance, signed up for a summer "taster" course in arts management, after working for 25 years in technical theatre. While on the course, she applied for a new job, and is now general manager of Mountview Academy of Theatre Arts. "The course gave me the confidence to make that change," she says.

At Edinburgh College of Art, which takes up to 900 students at its thriving summer school, professional artists work alongside amateurs, on courses ranging from digital photography and advanced stained glass to figure drawing and clay modelling. Dorothy Shannon, who is retired, has so enjoyed this summer school in recent years that she has now enrolled on a part-time BA in Combined Studies at the college. "The summer school is very stimulating – but not at all earnest," she says. "I'm impressed at the way people apply themselves. Getting stuck into a studio for a week or two is very satisfying."

Nottingham University's school of continuing education changed the name of its Learn at Leisure programme to Study Tours to reflect the programme's true nature. Looking at art in Florence or architecture in Rome may sound like pure holiday, but there is some hard thinking to be done here. "The principle thing is the academic content," explains Dr Sarah Speight, who will be leading an archaeological tour to Istanbul this autumn. "The last thing I want is to have 20 students on a tour who just want to listen to me. I want them to have done some reading in advance and be ready to give something back, to discuss and to argue."