Buckinghamshire New University (BNU) is delighted to announce its partnership with UK-wide university access charity, The Brilliant Club.
The charity works to support students to access university and succeed through their transition programme, Join the Dots, which provides one-to-one and group coaching from the PhD community within their university.
The collaboration is an activity as part of the university’s Access and Participation Plan (APP) 2025-2029 that was approved by the Office for Students. This plan aims to eliminate awarding gaps and other on-course outcomes so that there is equality of opportunity for all students to succeed. Our APP outlines where BNU has identified potential risks to equality of opportunity may be present.
Professor Paul Morgan Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education) said :
This collaboration will not only provide additional, focused support for students but the project will include rigorous evaluation that will provide us with insights about the academic support needs and confidence-building strategies for our students.
Our external collaboration with the Brilliant Club is a fantastic new partnership to provide tailored coaching, with colleagues from LEAP (Learning Enhancement & Academic Practice) and the Directorate for Student Success leading on the implementation of the initiative.
Join the Dots is particularly keen to support students who are first in family to access higher education; from the most deprived socio-economic backgrounds; are care experienced or are young carers; have special educational needs; have refugee and asylum status; and are from GTRSB communities.
Addressing the partnership, Pro Vice-Chancellor (Education) Professor Paul Morgan said:
“The Brilliant Club is widely respected across the UK for its work on supporting student success and this collaboration will not only provide additional, focused support for students, but the project will include rigorous evaluation that will provide us with insights about the academic support needs and confidence-building strategies that our students benefit from.”
The Brilliant Club’s Head of University Partnerships, David Horner, added:
“We are delighted to be partnering with Buckinghamshire New University and offering their undergraduate students the opportunity to take part in Join the Dots. Navigating the early days at university can be tough for many, especially less advantaged students. Through academic and peer support, Join the Dots can help new undergraduates feel like they belong.”
The Brilliant Club has been working with schools and universities across the UK for over a decade and is designed to support students facing the greatest challenges in making a successful transition to university and who are at risk of missing out on the life changing opportunities that come from higher education.
The first two cohorts of the programme have shown Join the Dots positively impacts key outcomes that underpin student success and that students who participate in the programme report higher levels of sense of belonging, as well as higher levels of academic self-efficacy and effective study strategy use. Importantly, all three of these intermediate outcomes are associated with retention and attainment at university.
Read more about Join the Dots here, and the impact The Brilliant Club had in previous years here.
