Welcome to the Aimhigher Cambridgeshire & Peterborough website

 

What is Aimhigher?

 

Simply put, Aimhigher is a multi-themed government funded initiative designed to encourage young people and adults into Higher Education. 

 

Aimhigher emerged in 2004 as an integration of the Partnerships for Progression initiative, which had focused on HEIs and FECs, and Aimhigher - formerly Excellence Challenge – supporting schools in Excellence in Cities Areas, EAZs and Excellence Clusters. Aimhigher in its current form began life in Cambridgeshire and Peterborough in the 2004/05 academic year.

 

Aimhigher investment in our Area will, by the end of this academic year, have totalled over £3,500,000 which has been used to fund around 2,500 separate initiatives that have reached around 20,000 learners in the county. 

 

Primarily a funding mechanism, Aimhigher mainly works with schools that have a higher proportion of harder-to-reach Aimhigher target learners than others, with a view to enabling and encouraging them to access Higher Education, but we recognise that there are learners in all schools and colleges that need our support.  To that end, we aim to support all institutions in the county in some way. 

 

The way funds are spent, the definition of our target groups, and the types of activity we support are governed both by funders, the Higher Education Funding Council (HEFCE) and our multi agency Partnership Committee. 

 

Aimhigher is not, in itself, a legal ‘entity’; the Central Team is employed by the University of Cambridge and is based at serviced offices in Westwood, Peterborough; the wider team is employed by a range of partner organisations.