An Independent Review to Identify Supports and Barriers for Lone Parents in Accessing Higher Education and to Examine Measures to Increase Participation

This independent review was commissioned by the Department of Education and Skills (DES) in association with the Department of Social Protection (DSP), the Department of Children and Youth Affairs (DCYA) and the Higher Education Authority (HEA). The remit was to: * Examine existing data to identify the trends in participation and completion rates by lone parents in Higher Education(HE), and identify measures to strengthen data collation on lone parents in the future. * Describe the range of measures that are currently available to support lone parents in accessing HE, including supports in the school and further education(FE)sectors. * Identify obstacles and challenges for the various different categories of lone parents in accessing and completing HE programmes. * Recommend additional measures that would support the different categories of lone parents in accessing and completing HE programmes, and provide costings for those recommendations. * Highlight potential models of good practice in Ireland or elsewhere that could be considered for wider dissemination