Who are Next Steps South West?
Next Steps South West (NSSW) is a collaboration of fourteen partner universities and colleges throughout Cornwall, Devon and Somerset. We are funded by the Office for Students (OfS).
As part of the Office for Students’ Uni Connect Programme, we help young people navigate their own personal journey to higher education. Across the region, we deliver events and activities designed to educate and inspire young people aged 13-19 years old, and those that influence them, such as parents and carers.

Image: An NSSW ambassador at the Skills South West 2019 event
As well as working directly with schools, this website is full of useful information designed to help young people think about where they’d like to be in the future, and how to get there. It also signposts towards other websites that we think have really good information that can help young people make decisions about where they want to go in life, and how to get there.
Target schools and pupils
Target groups and schools and colleges identified by the Office for Students (OfS) represent pupils that have the ability to progress on to higher education, though are unlikely to due to factors such as no one in their family having been before. Targeting schools and pupils is based on the Office for Students’ POLAR3 and Gaps classification. For further information on this, click here.
Get in touch
If you have a question, or would like to find out more about Next Steps South West, please feel free to Get in Touch.