Explore your options, discover your potential.
The Network for East Anglian Collaborative Outreach (neaco) aims to help young people from East Anglia with little or no experience of university to explore the world of higher education. We work with students in years 9-13 who live in areas identified by the Government with low rates of progression to higher education.
At the centre of our approach is our Take Your Place programme of activities. Take Your Place is delivered to students by our Higher Education Champions who are based in schools and colleges across the region.
This programme includes several strands, each addressing our students' identified needs and aims to increase progression to higher education. These identified needs include improving their understanding and preparedness towards applying for higher education and improving their passion and ambition towards the idea of higher education.
Our partners include all of the higher education providers in East Anglia, working closely with schools, Local Enterprise Partnerships, local authorities and other stakeholders.
neaco is one of 29 consortia across England that have been funded as part of the national collaborative outreach programme to deliver outreach in areas where the higher education participation of young people is low - and much lower than expected based on GCSE-level attainment.
Our Mission
Our mission is to support target students to make informed decisions about their future – particularly around progression to Higher Education – and to embed systemic change around Information, Advice and Guidance (IAG) provision in target schools.
We do this in three main ways
- By delivering and coordinating outreach activities which raise aspirations and support target students to make better informed choices
- By supporting the development of IAG related systems and infrastructure, and supporting Continuing Professional Development (CPD) for staff, in target schools and colleges
- By evaluating our approaches to ensure we learn which interventions work best
Through this, we can work towards our vision of equal rates of progression to higher education and higher apprenticeships between students living in target and non-target wards across East Anglia.
Our values
Each of our values enables us to ensure Take Your Place activity is aligned with the mission of the project and is consistent and adhering to a common and agreed framework.
Collaborative
We will work in partnership with other organisations and initiatives which have missions aligned to neaco
Sustainable
We will deliver and support activity which embeds systemic change in schools IAG; we will prioritise initiatives which are scalable and could be sustained post-neaco
Responsive
We will operate within an agreed framework, while supporting and responding to the needs of target schools
and students
Impartial
We will be impartial in promoting all available pathways and higher education providers within and beyond East Anglia
Learn
We will undertake research to inform practice and better understand decision making of target students; we will thoroughly monitor and evaluate impact; we will develop staff
