FYNAC2026

The Foundation Year Annual Conference (FYNAC) 2026 brings together educators, researchers, practitioners, and sector leaders to explore the evolving purpose, practice, and potential of Foundation Year provision.

Hosted by the University of Sunderland, this year’s conference will provide a space for discussion, innovation, collaboration, and celebration of the transformative role Foundation Years play across higher education.

Conference Theme

What’s the Point? Purpose, Practice and Potential in Foundation Year Education

The Foundation Year Annual Conference in 2026 will be hosted by the University of Sunderland. The conference is scheduled to be on 8th and 9th July 2026 at Sunderland’s St. Peter’s Campus on the riverside in Sunderland. Please look out for information and a call for papers in the autumn, along the theme of ‘What’s the point?’ that explores various areas of strength and advocacy for Foundation Years, with the overarching theme coming from the student panel at FYNAC24 at the University of Lincoln.

At the heart of this conference lies a student’s honest and disarming question: “What’s the point?” It is at once a challenge, a provocation and an invitation, calling us to reflect critically on the purpose and potential of Foundation Year education.

This question compels us not simply to justify what we do, but to reimagine why and how we do it: to reclaim purpose, re-envision practice and reignite the transformative possibilities of the Foundation Year as a meaningful educational space.

In the spirit of Paulo Freire, who reminds us that education must move beyond the passive transfer of information to awaken critical consciousness, this conference invites participants to consider how Foundation Year practice can transcend its instrumental framing around transition and retention. Instead, we ask how it can become a site of purpose, identity formation, community and radical possibility.

By taking “What’s the point?” seriously, not as a dismissal but as a moment of genuine inquiry, we open space to articulate the value, meaning and impact of Foundation Year education as a catalyst for both personal and collective transformation.

The Foundation Year Network wishes to ensure that members are not excluded from our events on financial grounds. We therefore are able to provide bursaries for support with the costs of attending our events – including transport, conference fees, childcare and other relevant costs. Decisions in relation to all applications and awards are entirely at the discretion of the FYN Executive Committee, with no opportunity for appeal. Any decision to award is a one-time goodwill gesture and creates no expectation as to possible future awards.

FYN Attendance Bursary Application Form 

 Seeing the Point: Student Voice, Motivation and Meaning

• How do students articulate, or struggle to articulate, the point of their studies?

• Breaking through moments of disengagement, resistance and scepticism

• Co-creation, agency and student-owned narratives of purpose

Making the Point Visible: Curriculum, Pedagogy and Assessment

• Teaching and assessment that make learning feel purposeful rather than performative

• Designing for motivation, relevance and identity-building

• AI, digital tools and innovative practice that speak to student realities

Holding the Point: Support, Belonging and Structural Conditions

• Systems and support that either clarify or obscure purpose

• Peer networks, mentorship and belonging as meaning-making structures

• Institutional narratives: are Foundation Year students positioned as “in need” or “full of potential”?

Reclaiming Potential: Critical Reflections and Future Directions

• Challenging deficit framings and transactional models of Foundation Years

• Reimagining Foundation Years as transformative spaces 

• What would it look like to design Foundation Year practice from the question itself?