Posted 24 July 2026

Over the past year, work has been underway to modernise how Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY) communicates with audiences who engage with our social media channels, campaigns, and school delivery. 

That work is now live: the GHWY Digital Hub. It represents a significant step forward in how we communicate our offer to students, families, and advisers, with a focused user journey and mobile first approach. This recognises that many people access information primarily through their mobile devices. 

This blog explains what’s been built, why, how the Hub fits into our wider strategic vision, and how you can use it to support your learners. 

Why we built the Hub 

As a partnership of 13 Higher Education (HE) providers that delivers the region’s Uni Connect programme, GHWY works with three distinct audiences: students, parents and carers, and advisers. Each group has different needs, different levels of familiarity with higher education, and different questions. The Digital Hub has been developed to serve each of these groups more directly, with content and journeys built specifically around what they’re looking for. It works with them to more easily understand the HE options available to them. 

The Hub builds on the strong foundation of our existing web presence, extending it with more targeted audience journeys, specifically for campaigns. It factors in user behaviours and mobile first approaches to how messaging is delivered, and has a robust technical and analytics base to support our work going forward – tracking how each audience engages with their journey through the Hub, and feeding directly into how we report reach and impact to members and the Office for Students (OfS).

Supporting campaign activity 

The Hub has been launched alongside two live campaigns, each designed to reach a distinct audience at a distinct – and critical – point in the year. 

Parents and carers campaign (Meta) 

Evidence consistently shows that parents and carers are one of the most significant influences on whether a young person considers higher education, particularly in households with no prior experience of university. This campaign uses targeted Meta (Facebook/Instagram) advertising to reach parents and carers directly, with creative messaging developed and iteratively refined to demystify higher education and answer the practical questions this audience has – qualification types, local options, and the financial and wellbeing support available – while making clear what these routes can open up for their young person. 

Learners: Clearing and HE options campaign 

Timed to coincide with results day and the Clearing period, this campaign supports learners at what is often the single most time-pressured and consequential moment of their post-16 journey. It is underpinned by a new course discovery tool built specifically for this purpose: an automated system that gathers live course availability directly from each of GHWY’s members and cross-references this against UCAS’s own data, refreshing throughout the day. 

The result is a course finder tool that reflects genuine, real-time availability, giving learners and advisers an accurate picture of the local options at the exact moment they’re making decisions. The tool is promoted through our existing web and social channels, and we’d encourage advisers and student-facing staff to signpost it on results day to learners who are interested in local options. 

Beyond the campaigns: the wider resource offer 

Alongside the two campaigns, the Hub also brings together the full range of GHWY’s existing support in one place. Advisers can access free CPD sessions, along with resources covering care leavers, disabled learners, young carers, and employability skills – including a dedicated disabled learners’ transition pack. For learners, there are HE guides for disabled and care-experienced students, funding support, and honest first-hand accounts of student life, alongside free downloadable guides and workbooks. 

Why this matters for the partnership 

At its heart, this work is about making sure that every learner in West Yorkshire – whatever their background or however familiar their family is with higher education – can find clear, honest advice on their options. Giving all 13 members a shared, professional digital presence means teachers and advisers across the region have one trusted place to point learners to, rather than piecing together information from 13 different sources. 

It also means we can better understand what’s actually helping – which resources teachers are using, which questions parents are asking, where learners get stuck – so the support we build keeps improving around the people using it. 

How you can use the Hub 

Further development of the Hub is ongoing, and updates will follow as new features and content areas are added. In the meantime, here’s how you can help: 

• Visit ghwy.uk and familiarise yourself with the resources available, and the journeys built for students, parents/carers, and advisers. 
• Share the course finder tool with your advisers and student-facing teams to help inform learners of the range of higher education on offer within the region. 
• Add the parents/carers page to your termly communications with families. 
• Get in touch with any questions or feedback via the contact form on the site. 

 

David Moore, GHWY Project Officer (Digital Comms & Marketing)