Fast Trackers

Supporting local minority ethnic pupils.

The Fast Trackers programme, which began in 2009, is a one year mentoring programme designed to support Year 11 students from a Somali, Yemeni and Black British backgrounds to get the most out of their final school year and maximise their results at GCSE level.

The students are selected from Liverpool schools and attend weekly mentoring sessions organised by the Widening Participation and Outreach team over a 10-week period. These sessions involve the young people working closely with currently undergraduate mentors, who support them with coursework, homework and study skills.

Throughout the year the programme also includes presentations from the Widening Participation and Outreach team and the mentors on different aspects of higher education such as time management and student finance and wider opportunities at the University.

It has also been arranged in the past for prominent members of the local community to attend and deliver talks to the young people about their own experiences of education, and how these led to their current careers.

Owing to the long-term success of the Fast Trackers programme in raising aspirations to attend university and aiding attainment, the programme was featured as a case study of good practice by the Office for Students in guidance released in February 2019: Understanding and overcoming the challenges of targeting students from under-represented and disadvantaged ethnic backgrounds (440KB, PDF).

Fast Trackers is coordinated in collaboration with the Liverpool Ethnic Minority and Traveller Achievement Service (EMTAS).