As Keenan (2014) reports, peer-led learning schemes are gaining momentum globally, bringing benefits to both ‘peer leaders’ and their mentees. Such schemes can also be vehicles for student engagement and supporting successful transition. In its Peer-Assisted Student Success (PASS) scheme, London Metropolitan University has developed a course-embedded model in which trained ‘Success Coaches’ provide academic and personal guidance to first-years on all undergraduate degree programmes via in-class groups and one-to-one support. Another distinctive feature is its adoption of a coaching philosophy in the role of student mentoring. This case study explores the experiences and benefits accrued by both first-year students and Success Coaches from this coaching style, drawing on rich data collected via focus groups using images as a form of ‘arts-based inquiry’. Themes emerging from the data illuminate the nature of the peer relationship. The paper also considers implications, for peer-mentor training, of incorporating a coaching approach.

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Throughout the REACT project, the core institutions of Winchester, Exeter and London Metropolitan have been conducting an in-depth, multi-faceted evaluation of selected co-curricular student engagement activities – ‘Student Fellows’, ‘Change Agents’ and ‘Peer-Assisted Student Success’ respectively. This involved the collection of survey data to explore key concepts related to the motivations of students to participate in these initiatives. This survey explores areas including employability, academic study and partnership, with an aim of improving co-curricular initiatives to make them more inclusive of ‘hard to reach’ students. These ‘motivations’ to participate are used to contextualise data about the attainment and continuation of active student participants. Rather than seek to assert or confirm that various groups are ‘hard to reach’, this research seeks to understand better what does and does not make co-curricular activities inclusive of hard-to-reach students. In this sense, the aim is to have a greater understanding of how students are successfully ‘reached’. Discussion will focus on how attainment and retention can help us to explore whether a wide range of students is benefiting from participation.

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The REACT programme was designed to make a significant impact on student engagement and the student experience in the Higher Education (HE) sector in England and Wales over a two-year period, from July 2015 to July 2017. The focus, in particular, was on the engagement of so-called ‘hard to reach’ students, and the programme included: investigation into the term ‘hard to reach’ and a consideration of which students are characterised in this way; a formal research project looking at links between student engagement, retention and attainment; and a development programme as a collaboration between fifteen UK universities. Outcomes from each of these were disseminated at a final conference at the University of Winchester in May 2017, where practice and findings from the programme as a whole were shared. The programme also included the creation of a website of case studies and tools for use by the sector. The programme was funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and was formally evaluated by an external team from GuildHE.