Why equestrian education providers are missing a trick with widening participation in the equestrian industry

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Widening participation in higher and further education refers to increasing access for groups who are currently under-represented or who experience more barriers to education than others. Metrics that are used to measure this include eligibility for free school meals, sex, ethnicity, special educational needs status, first language and POLAR quintile and region (a postcode measure).

The equestrian industry is one which traditionally is associated with affluence and elitism, but there is also no other industry that offers a direct pipeline to where learners who fulfill these demographics in such a straightforward way.

Unlike literally any other subject, you know exactly where your equestrian learners are from widening participation backgrounds are. They are at riding schools.

Riding schools are magical places. They are time vortexes. I spent hundreds of hours as a teenager at mine, doing everything and nothing, along with the others who were like a sisterhood. These girls came from diverse backgrounds. Some of them were care experienced. Some of them were on free school meals. Some of them went to low attainment schools (like me!). Some of them went to private school. It literally didn’t matter, because we were all in it for the love of the horse.

The thing is though, when you’re at a riding school, often it can feel like you are stuck in that vortex forever and it’s hard to imagine life on the outside. You don’t know what’s out there. It can also feel like if you don’t come from a horsey background or have your own pony, that you don’t belong anywhere other than a riding school. 

Perceptions like these create self fulfilling prophecies. You get to an age where people tell you to think about “what to do after school,” so you look at working with horses. It’s hard to find information. Everything is cloudy. You can’t get straight answers from those advising you because they don’t know anything about it. You think you don’t belong, you can’t do it, so you don’t. The self fulfilling prophecy comes true. 

In order to tap into that specialised, niche market, that is desperate to learn and engage, you need to do it with transparency. That’s where Equine Qualifications UK CIC comes along. I’ve spent the last two years speaking to young people and yards across the country, and the picture is very much the same as it was when I was younger.

My goal is to put EQUK into every single riding school across the country. Doing that allows providers of equine education reach their WP markets. It installs transparency and a practical mechanism to widening access, strategically placing education providers in front of learners who “don’t think equine education is for them.”

In the words of one of the girls I grew up with, who now no longer rides or has anything to do with horses:

“This would have been a game changer for me.”

When it comes to widening participation, education providers face a significant challenge. They have to recruit learners who come from these ‘harder to reach’ backgrounds and it can be easy for them to assume that spaces like equestrianism is not where these learners are. However, that assumption is false. Young people who love horses will always find a way to be involved with them. They are passionate and tenacious, but often that energy is focused on the horses themselves rather on their own futures.

When you experience barriers to doing something you love, you become hypersensitive. You notice reasons something is not meant for you, rather than reasons it is. That is why mechanisms to facilitate widening participation have to improve transparency, remove these barriers, and in the simplest terms, make it more straightforward. Give learners the information they need to make decisions, rather than hiding it away. Provide them with the support they need to make informed decisions.

Passion is a currency in the equestrian industry which is often exploited. It’s also a currency which is wasted when it is not correctly channeled. Providers of equestrian education can easily support their widening access recruitment by working with EQUK. It goes beyond capitalising on a unique space online, beyond using social media to reach these learners (although it does that too). It takes equestrian education directly to the learners who are more likely to believe it’s not meant for them, and shows them that it is.

EQUK is developing its online database of equestrian education. Contact hello@equk.org to get involved today.

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