Category: Access & WP

Inclusivity should be about more than individual needs
Assessment lies at the core of higher education. It helps focus students’ learning and helps them evidence, to themselves and to others, the progress they have made in their learning and growth.

Setting, supporting and marking assessed student work takes up a substantial proportion of academic colleagues’ effort and time.

Approaches to assessment and outcomes of assessment experiences underpin the narratives crafted by many higher education providers to showcase how they secure meaningful educational gains for their students.

It’s not just what you know

Educational gains go well beyond academic assessment, yet assessment is central to student experiences and should not be limited to academic knowledge gains. Indeed, a nuanced and insightful independent report commissioned by the Office for Students in March 2024 on how educational gains were defined and articulated in TEF 2023 submissions notes that providers rated gold for student outcomes

“make reference to enhancing student assessment practices as a vehicle for embedding identified educational gains into the curriculum, explaining that their range of assessments is designed to assess beyond subject knowledge.”

Assessments that require evidence of learning beyond subject knowledge are a particularly pertinent point to ponder, because these assessments are more likely to underpin the kind of inclusive higher education experiences that providers hope to create for their students, with inclusion understood in broad rather than narrow terms.

The link between inclusion and assessment has been problematised by scholars of higher education. A narrow view of inclusive assessment focuses on individual adjustments in response to specific student needs. Higher education providers, however, would benefit from developing a broad definition of inclusive assessment if they are intent on meaningfully defining educational gains. Such a definition will need to move beyond implementing individual adjustments on a case by case basis, to consider intersecting and diverse student backgrounds that may impact how a student engages with their learning.

Well-defined

A good definition should also be mindful of (but not constrained by) needs and priorities articulated by external bodies and employers. It should be based on a thorough understanding of how to create equitable student assessment experiences in interdisciplinary settings (being able to operate flexibly across disciplines is key to solving societal challenges). It should appreciate that bringing co and extra-curricular experiences into summative assessment does not dilute a course or programme academic core.

It should be aligned to a view of assessment for and as learning. It should value impact that goes beyond individual student achievement and is experienced more broadly in the assessment context. Importantly, it should embrace the potential of generative artificial intelligence to enhance student learning while preserving the integrity of assessment decisions and the need for students to make responsible use of generative tools during and beyond their studies.

All higher education providers are likely to be able to find at least some examples of good, broadly defined inclusive practice in their contexts – these may just need to be spotlighted for others to consider and engage with. To help with this task, providers should be exploring
- · Who is included in conversations about what is assessed, when and how?
- · How fully are experiences outside a more narrowly defined academic curriculum core included in summative evaluative judgements about student achievement of intended and desired outcomes?
- · To what extent does the range of assessments within a course or programme include opportunities for students to have their most significant strengths developed and recognised?
Providers should develop their own narratives and frameworks of educational gains to create full inclusion in and through assessment. As they carefully implement these (implementation is key), they may also consider not just the gains that can be evidenced but also whether they could attract, welcome and evidence gains for a broader range of students than might have been included in the providers’ initial plans.

And suppose energy to rethink assessment reaches a low point. In that case, it will be useful to remember that insufficient attention to inclusion, broadly defined, when assessing learning and measuring gains can (inadvertently) create further disadvantage for individuals, as it preserves the system that created the disadvantage in the first place.
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August 26, 2025
Care experienced students are assets, not risks
We have spent decades asking what support care leavers need to “catch up” in education. But what if we focused instead on what they already bring?

Thirty years since I left the care system, I reflect on low expectations, persistent awarding gaps, and why higher education needs to reframe the care experience.

Low expectations

“One GCSE is enough, you’re in care”. That’s what I was told as a teenager growing up in the care system. That message stayed with me, if one GCSE was enough for someone like me, then I was not expected to succeed, I was expected to survive.

By the time I was studying for my A levels I was living independently and worked full time. University at 18 was not an option, it was unthinkable. Years later, I found myself on a BTEC in health and social care as part of a role as a children’s rights worker, and that was where I discovered psychology.

Suddenly, everything in my life made sense, my upbringing, my responses, the systems around me. I applied for university in 2002 and completed my first term while pregnant. At 36 I became a lecturer in education and psychology in higher education, teaching education through a psychological lens to education students, many of whom want to become teachers themselves.

A full circle moment

Recently, I hosted an A level psychology student for a placement. On the final day, she revealed that one of her teachers had been one of my undergraduate students. The moment was moving, not because she was care experienced (she wasn’t), or because the teacher was (they weren’t), but because it showed how my journey, rooted in care, had rippled out into the education system in ways I never imagined.

That moment hit me like a wave. It was not just a neat coincidence, it was a full circle moment that challenged everything I had been told about my place in education.

It reminded me that care experienced students are not simply passing through higher education as “at risk” individuals in need of support. Instead, we are contributing to it, we are building it and sometimes we are shaping the success of others in ways that last longer than we realise.

Ditching deficit thinking

What if we stopped asking what care experienced students lack? Too often, care leavers are described as “at risk” of exclusion, poor attainment, and drop-out. We talk about their trauma, instability, or disadvantage.

Those challenges are real and need addressing – but rarely do we ask what strengths they bring with them. We bring resilience, not just as a feel good buzzword, but as a lived practice. We know how to manage under pressure, navigate uncertainty, and stay focused when stability is not guaranteed.

We bring empathy, because we have seen how systems can fail people and we have learned how to listen, observe, and understand beneath the surface. We bring adaptability because when your life has taught you that plans change, support disappears, and people move on, you learn how to adjust quickly, quietly, and effectively and we bring purpose. Many of us enter education not out of expectation, but out of intent because we want to create the kind of impact we once needed. It is that intent that makes us powerful educators, mentors, and role models even for students who do not share our background.

Within the classroom, I sometimes hear mature students described as “assets” because they bring work experience, life experience, and often support other students. Care experienced students who are appropriately nurtured and empowered bring their own strengths to their peers. They also bring different and valuable perspectives – particularly relevant to social sciences disciplines – about social inequity, systemic injustice, and resilience that can open up important conversations about theory and its relevance to the “real world” and prepare the students they learn alongside for work in a world in which they will encounter diverse and disadvantaged others.

My time in care taught me skills that have defined my academic and professional life – I learned independence young and I developed empathy and adaptability not just emotionally, but practically, not as nice extras but as core strengths. They have helped me understand students better and helped shape the kind of lecturer I am.

Care experienced students do not just overcome adversity, they carry rich insight, emotional intelligence, and a deep understanding of social systems and sometimes, like in my case, they help educate the people who go on to teach the next generation.

Having said that, it’s 30 years since I left the care system – is it still the same?

Not enough has changed

In many ways, the system looks different today. Every looked-after child has a Personal Education Plan (PEP), schools appoint designated teachers, virtual school heads oversee progress, and there’s a £2,345 per-child annual Pupil Premium Plus. In principle, care-experienced learners are a priority. Some universities make contextual offers to care leavers in recognition of the challenges they faced on their way through the education system.

Yet the numbers tell a different story:
- only 37 per cent of looked-after children reach expected levels at Key Stage 2 (vs 65 per cent of peers)
- only 7.2 per cent achieve grade 5+ in English and maths at GCSE (vs 40 per cent)
- at age 19, just 13 per cent of care leavers enter higher education (vs 45 per cent of others).
These gaps are not just statistical, they reflect structural inequalities, where expectations remain low and pathways to university feel closed off before they have even begun. For a care experienced student to find their way into higher education is a testament to their determination, resilience, and motivation before they even start.

A fight not a right

My mantra was “education was a fight not a right”. We may no longer say, “one GCSE is enough” out loud – but it is still heard in the subtext of our systems.

We talk about “widening participation” and “belonging,” but too often, care experienced learners are left out of those conversations, or placed into categories of concern rather than capability. Recently, my ten-year-old said something that stopped me in my tracks: “children shouldn’t be judged on academic intelligence but on creative intelligence. School is more about following the rules than finding yourself.”

They are right – the education system has moved from creativity to conformity and in doing so, we do not just risk excluding care experienced learners, we risk losing the individuality, emotional intelligence, and imaginative power that all students bring. The ones who have had to survive the most often bring innovation and creativity. When we centre care experienced voices in policy, in pedagogy, and in professional learning, we begin to close the awarding gap, the one that limits how we (and sometimes they) see their potential.

Higher education did not just change my life. It gave me the chance to change other people’s too – and that is an opportunity we should provide to all our children.
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August 20, 2025
Working with our places will help us to spread the benefits of higher education more widely
In the North East of England, fewer than one in three 18 year olds enter higher education, compared to a national average of 37 per cent.

For higher education institutions, including my own, this is more than a regrettable statistic. It must be a call to action. The Sutton Trust’s Opportunity Index highlights that the North East ranks lowest of all English regions for social mobility prospects, with the poorest students in the region facing some of the most limited chances for progression into higher education and good employment.

As a country we have undoubtedly made progress in widening participation, but as someone who spends their days thinking about such things, I worry: are we measuring that progress in the right ways? It’s not just about the gateway to university, it’s about the university journey and beyond. Or, to put it in more human terms: are people who previously wouldn’t have gone to university not only getting in, but thriving once they’re in?

If we carry on measuring widening participation purely by entry stats and graduate salaries, we’ll miss the bigger picture, and what many of us went into higher education to try to achieve: deeper, transformative impact. A university education does more than prepare someone for a job. There is good evidence that links it to longer life expectancy, better health, and greater stability.

The benefits of university go beyond the individual. Children of university graduates are much more likely to attend university and perform better once there. When a young person from a disadvantaged background earns a degree, it can spark a ripple effect that changes their family’s trajectory for good.

There’s also a clear economic case for seeing success more broadly. Graduates typically pay more in tax, rely less on welfare services, and are more likely to engage in civic life. In regions like ours, where economic renewal and social mobility are deeply connected, that impact is amplified. A university education doesn’t just boost an individual’s prospects – it helps build stronger, more resilient communities.

Whole-journey approach

If we are truly serious about transforming lives and levelling up opportunity, especially in so-called “cold spots” like County Durham, then we need to dig deeper, beyond continuation rates and into attainment and the feeling of belonging. Financial strains, cultural barriers, wellbeing concerns, and more must be recognised and overcome. These are challenges not just for admissions, but across the entire student journey.

Attainment gaps have a substantial impact, and disadvantaged students can be up to 22.7 months behind advantaged peers by the time they take their GCSEs. GCSE performance is strongly correlated with later life outcomes, including university attendance and employment quality. Early outreach is therefore pivotal in closing these long-standing gaps.

It’s a challenge we take seriously. We’re not just widening the door – we’re reshaping the whole experience: investing nearly £1.5m in programmes for Key Stage 4 and 5 students, strengthening our foundation programme, and working with Sunderland AFC’s Foundation of Light to create a new health hub in one of our most deprived communities.

One of the clearest messages of our new access and participation plan is how deeply place and perception are intertwined. Many young people in North East England don’t just lack opportunities – they’re not even sure those opportunities are meant for them. And, sadly, some still perceive Durham to be a place where they wouldn’t belong. Multiple studies show a strong link between a sense of belonging and academic success, particularly for underrepresented groups. So we’re investing in transition support and the Brilliant Club’s Join the Dots programme, which connects incoming students with peer coaches from results day onward.

What we’re trying to achieve with our strategy cannot and should not be measured solely in continuation rates and degree classifications. Our evaluation strategy includes:
- Sense of belonging as a core outcome: Building on Durham-led research, we are embedding a validated survey tool into our access and participation work. This tool captures students’ sense of belonging across multiple domains — from college life to academic confidence. These survey findings will help us identify and support groups at higher risk of exclusion.
- Quasi-experimental design: Where sample sizes allow, we will use matched control groups and multiple regression analysis to compare outcomes between intervention participants and non-participants, tracking progress from outreach through to graduation. Intermediate metrics include not only continuation and attainment but also self-efficacy and engagement.
- Pre/post measures: Our use of TASO’s validated access and success questionnaire enables pre- and post-intervention analysis of psychosocial outcomes such as academic self-efficacy and expectations of higher education.
- Theory of change models: These have been developed for each intervention strand and will be regularly updated to ensure our work is aligned with evidence and outcomes over time.
While our approach is rigorous, we anticipate several challenges. Students from disadvantaged backgrounds face cost-related pressures that may impact belonging and continuation. And persistent concerns about whether students from working-class or Northern backgrounds “belong” at Durham risk undermining recruitment and retention. We aim to confront this through co-designed interventions, but change in perception takes time.

Co-development is key

We believe that we can only succeed for the North East by working with others: through Universities for North East England – which includes Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland, and Teesside; and the new Durham Learning Alliance partnership with four local colleges – we must expand educational opportunities and drive economic growth.

When people see that their goals and dreams are genuinely realisable, they’re far more likely to engage. After all, who are we to define what success should look like for someone else?

The government’s opportunity mission gives higher education a rare, and much-needed, moment to pause and reset. Let’s not waste it. We’ve got a chance to rethink what success means – not just for universities, but for the people and places we serve. Let’s broaden the conversation beyond who gets through the door. Let’s put co-development at the heart of everything we do. And above all, let’s keep listening – not just to what students need, but to what they hope for. In the end, the real test of progress isn’t just who gets in. It’s who gets on – and how far they go, with us walking alongside them.
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August 15, 2025
For some students, home doesn’t feel like home

In Britain, we can be oddly squeamish when talking about class, whether known or implied through a person’s accent, appearance, or behaviour.

But not having an honest conversation with ourselves and our institutions about it is actively harming our students, especially the ones who are from the area where our institutions sit.

I was one of a team of authors that published a report at the back end of 2024 exploring the role of social class and UK home region at Durham University. Our research, which was supported by the university, found that students from North East England had a lower sense of belonging than their peers.

This is in comparison to students from other northern regions, the rest of the UK, and international students. And it is true even if they are from more advantaged backgrounds.

I’ll say that again – students from North East England feel excluded from Durham University, which is in… North East England. This highlights that a problem at Durham University is not only class, but preconceived stereotypes based on how a person speaks, acts, or their family background.

This article explains how we built our evidence base, and how the university responded, including by integrating our recommendations into the new Access and Participation Plan, and resourcing new staff roles and student-led activity.

From anecdote to evidence

The student-led report came out of the First Generation Scholars group in the Anthropology department in 2022.

Having heard repeatedly the issues that first generation students were facing, and feeling it ourselves, we decided to move beyond anecdotal stories which were known in the university, and produce something concrete and legible which couldn’t be denied.

We devised a survey and sent it to every student, with a 10 per cent response rate. Follow up focus groups were conducted to add additional context to the quantitative findings and ensure the voices of those who had been let down were heard.

The findings were grouped into seven areas – overall sense of belonging at Durham, peer relationships, experiences in teaching and learning, college events and activities, college staff relationships, experiences in clubs and societies, and financial considerations.

Across all these areas, social class had the strongest and most consistent effect. Students from less privileged backgrounds were more likely to feel ashamed of the way they speak, dress, and express themselves.

They students felt targeted based on their background or personal characteristics – and said they were:

…being told countless times by a flatmate that I seem the ‘most chavvy’ and continuously refer to Northerners as degenerates.

…at a formal dinner, students laughed at my North-east accent, they asked if I lived in a pit village.

The irony is that due to rising housing costs, many students really are being forced to live in pit villages.

These instances weren’t only present in peer interactions – but also took place in the teaching and learning spaces. One student said that during a lecture, the lecturer mentioned that they couldn’t understand what the IT staff member was saying due to his North East accent – which was the same as the students’.

Another noted that their peers were “sniggering when I made a comment in a tutorial.” Comments like these have led to students self-silencing during classes and, in some cases, changing their accents entirely to avoid stigma.

Anecdotally, I’ve heard students say that their families laugh when they hear their new accent. If we are implicitly telling students that they have to change who they are in their own region, their own city, amongst their own family in order to fit in, we are telling them that they are not safe to be authentically themselves. That message lingers beyond university.

The report notes that other groups of students also experienced exclusion. These included women, LGBTQ+ students, and students with a disability – although only disability came close to the magnitude of effects explained by social class and region.

It should be noted that these are protected characteristics, while class and region are not. But there was also an interaction between these characteristics, class, and region. Women from less advantaged backgrounds from North East England had a worse time than their southern peers – which they reported as being due to their perceived intelligence and sexual availability. One North East female student stated,

I was a bet for someone to sleep with at a college party because ‘Northern girls are easy.’

Tackling the sense of exclusion

The report also highlights instances of real connections for students. It was often in the simplest gestures, such as having a cup of tea with their college principal, porters saying hello in the corridor, or a lecturer confirming that they deserved to be at Durham, despite the student’s working-class background.

We were worried that the university might be quick to dismiss, bury, or simply ignore the report. However, they’ve stepped up. The report has been used in the new Access and Participation Plan (APP), underpinning an intervention strategy to increase students’ sense of belonging through student-led, funded activities.

That builds on the creation of new, instrumental staffing positions. In discussions following the launch event for the report, there was a real buzz and momentum from colleagues who spotlighted the work they were doing in this area – but with an awareness that more needs to be done.

A key issue is connecting this discrete but interconnected work. Many activities or initiatives are happening in silos within departments, colleges, faculties, or within the central university, with few outside those realms knowing about it.

In a time when every university is tightening their belts, coordinating activities to share resources and successes seems like an easy win.

It would be easy to dismiss the problem as unique to Durham – the university and its students have often been under fire for being elitist, tone deaf, or exclusionary. But it’s likely that students at other institutions are facing similar barriers, comments, and slights.

I’ve spoken to enough colleagues in SUs to know that it isn’t just a Durham problem, not even just a Russell Group problem. There will be those who are afraid of what they might find if they turn over that particular stone, actually having a good look at how social class impacts students belonging.

But I’d argue it’s a positive thing to do. Bringing it into the light and confronting and acknowledging the problem means that we can move forward to make our students’ lives better.

Read the full report here, including recommendations, and the university’s comments.

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August 14, 2025
What works for supporting student access and success when there’s no money?

In 2021 AdvanceHE published our literature review which set out to demonstrate significant impact in access, retention, attainment and progression from 2016–21.

Our aim was to help institutional decision making and improve student success outcomes. This literature has helped to develop intervention strategies in Access and Participation Plans. But the HE world has changed since review and publication.

Recent sector data for England showed that 43 per cent of higher education providers sampled by the Office for Students (OfS) were forecasting a deficit for 2024–25 and concluded that:

Many institutions have ongoing cost reduction programmes to help underpin their financial sustainability. Some are reducing the number of courses they offer, while others are selling assets that are no longer needed.

All the while, institutions are, quite rightly, under pressure to maintain and enhance student success.

The findings of our 2021 review represent a time, not so long ago, when interventions could be designed and tested without the theorising and evaluation now prescribed by OfS. We presented a suite of options to encourage innovation and experimentation. Decision making now feels somewhat different. Many institutions will be asking “what works now, as we find ourselves in a period of financial challenge and uncertainty?”

Mattering still matters

The overarching theme of “mattering” (France and Finney 2009, among others) was apparent in the interventions we analysed in the 2021 review. At its simplest, this is interventions or approaches which demonstrate to students that their university cares about them; that they matter. This can be manifest in the interactions they have with staff, with systems and processes, with each other; with the approaches to teaching that are adopted; with the messages (implicit and explicit) that the institution communicates.

Arguably, a core aspect of mattering is “free” in terms of hard cash – us showing students that we care about them, their experience, and their progress, for staff to have a friendly approach, a regular check in, and meaningful and genuine dialogue with students. Such interactions may well carry an emotional cost however, and how staff are feeling – whether they feel that they matter to the institution – could impact on morale and potentially make this more difficult. We should also be mindful of the gendered labour that can be evident when teaching academics are encouraged to pick up more “pastoral” care of students; in research-intensive institutions, this may be more apparent when a greater proportion of female staff are employed on teaching focused contracts.

In our original review we found that there were clear relationships between each student outcome area – access, retention, attainment and progression – and some interventions had impact on more than one outcome. Here are five of our examples, within the overarching theme of mattering, which remind the sector of this impact evidence whilst illustrating developments in thinking and implementation.

Five impactful practices

Interventions which provide financial aid or assistance to students pre and post entry were evidenced as impactful in the 2016-2021 literature. We remember the necessity of providing financial aid for students during Covid, with the government even providing additional funding for students in need. In the current financial climate, the provision of extra funding may feel like a dream for many institutions. Cost reduction pressures may mean that reducing sizable student support budgets are an easy short-term win to balance the books.

In fact late last year, Jim Dickinson predicted just this as the first wave APPs referenced a likely decline in financial support. As evaluative data has shown, hardship funding is used by students to fund the cost of living. When money is tight, an alternative approach is to apply targeted aid where there is evidence of known disadvantage. Historically the sector has not been great at targeting, but it has become a necessity. Preventing student withdrawal has never been more important.

We also noted that early interventions delivered pre-entry and during transition and induction were particularly effective. The sector has positioned early and foundational experiences of students as crucial for many years. When discussions about cost effectiveness look to models of student support, targeting investment in the early years of study, rather than universally applied, could have the highest impact. Continuation metrics (year one to year two retention) again drive this thinking, with discrete interventions being the simplest to evaluate but perhaps the most costly to resource. Billy Wong’s new evidence exploring an online transition module and associated continuation impact is a pertinent example of upfront design costs (creation), low delivery costs (online), and good impact (continuation).

Another potentially low cost intervention is the design of early “low stakes” assessment opportunities that give students the chance to have early successes and early helpful feedback which, if well designed, can support students feeling that they matter. These types of assessments can support student resilience and increase the likelihood of them continuing their studies, as well as providing the institution with timely learner analytics regarding who may be in need of extra support (a key flag for potential at-risk students being non-completion of assessments). This itself is a cost saving measure as it enables the prioritisation of intervention and resource where the need is likely to be greatest.

Pedagogically driven interventions were shown in our review to have an impact across student outcome areas. This included the purposeful design of the student’s curriculum to impact on student learning, attainment, and future progression. Many institutions are embarking on large scale curriculum change with an efficiency (and student experience/outcomes) lens. Thinking long term enough to avoid future change, yet attending to short term needs is a constant battle, as is retaining conversations of values and pedagogy.

How we teach is perhaps one of the most powerful and “cost-free” mechanisms available, given many students may prioritise what time they can spend on campus towards attending taught sessions. An extremely common concern expressed by new (and not so new) lecturers and GTAs when encouraged to interact with students in their teaching is “But what if I get asked a question that I don’t know the answer to?” Without development and support, this fear (along with an understandable assumption that their role is to “transmit” knowledge) often results in a retreat to didactic, content heavy approaches, a safe space for the expert in the room.

But participative sessions that embed inclusive teaching, relational and compassionate pedagogies, that create a sense of community in the classroom where contributions are valued and encouraged, where students get to know each other and us – all such approaches can show students that they matter and support their experience and their success.

We also found that interventions which provided personal support and guidance for students impacted positively on student outcomes. One to one support can be impactful but costly. Adaptations in delivery or approach, for example, small group rather than individual sessions and models of peer support are worth exploring in a resource sensitive environment. Embedding personal and academic support within course delivery and operating an effective referral system for students when needed, is another way to get the most out of existing resources.

Finally, the effective use of learner analytics was a common theme in our review of impact. Certainly, the proactive use of data to support the identification of student need/risk makes good moral and financial sense. However, large scale investment might be necessary to realise longer term financial gains. This might be an extension of existing infrastructure or as Peck, McCarthy and Shaw recently suggested, HE institutions might turn to AI to play a major role in recognising students who are vulnerable or in distress.

Confronting the hidden costs

These financial dilemmas may feel uncomfortable; someone ultimately gains less (loses out?) in a targeted approach to enhancing student success. Equality of opportunity and outcome gaps alongside financial transparency should be at the forefront of difficult decisions (use equality legislation on positive action to underpin targeting decisions as needed). Evaluation, and learning from the findings, become even more important in the context of scarce resources. While quick decisions to realise financial savings may seem attractive, a critical eye on the what works evidence base is essential to have long term impact.

Beyond our AHE review, TASO has a useful evidence toolkit which notes cost alongside assumed impact and the strength of the evidence. As an example, the provision of information, advice and guidance and work experience are cited as low cost (one star), with high-ish impact (two stars). This evidence base only references specific evidence types (namely causal/type three evidence). The series of evidence-based frameworks (such as Student Success, Employability, Inclusive Practice) from AdvanceHE are alternative reference points.

The caveat to all of the above is that new approaches carry a staff development cost. In fact, all of the “low cost” interventions and approaches cited need investment in the development and support of academic staff. We are often supported by brilliant teams of learning designers and educational developers, but they cannot do all this heavy lifting on their own given the scale of the task ahead. As significant challenges like AI ask us to fundamentally rethink our purpose as educators in higher education, perhaps staff development is what we should be investing in now more than ever?

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August 13, 2025
Just 329 students with an EHCP got to a high tariff provider last year

Everyone who can benefit from higher education deserves to do so. That’s pretty much what people remember the Robbins report as saying – and it is a comforting story that higher education likes to tell itself.

But it doesn’t really hold true in the experiences of an increasingly diverse pool of potential applicants.

The state of the art of supporting and regulating fair access to (and participation in) higher education in England has moved far beyond the (rather unsophisticated) idea of national targets and metrics. Like it or loathe it, the risk-based approach taken by the Office for Students is commendably grounded both in the experience of individual students and the academic literature.

However a weakness of this approach is the temptation to argue that any access gaps represent a failure of higher education providers rather than taking a whole system (educational and, indeed socio-economic) perspective. When we do glance at wider problems with, say schools attainment it may not always be universities that are best placed (or adequately supported) to address them.

And let us not be coy here – there are gaps:

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The chart shows progression rates to HE, either to all providers or “high tariff providers” (of which more later) for each year since 2009-10. The size of the dots represent the number of students in that population, the colours represent the groups of characteristics: you get everything from measures of economic disadvantage, to ethnicity, to disability and – new for this year – care experience. We are looking at the students that might usually be expected to enter HE that academic year (so the cohort that turned 18 the previous year – those who took a year out before university or who progress after resits will not be shown as progression to HE).

SEN and EHCP

There’s thousands of potential stories in this data – for this article I’m going to focus on special educational needs (SEN) as a factor influencing progression.

As you can see from the chart 21.1 per cent of students with any special educational need progressed to higher education by the age of 19 in 2023-24. This is the highest on record, but before you break open the champagne we should add that the progression rate for their peers without SEN was more than 50 per cent. And for progression to high tariff providers the gap is even starker: 14.9 per cent without SEN, 3.8 with.

Though a traditional image of a student with SEN may be of someone who is less academically able, there are many very academically inclined students who have SEN and are able to progress to any destination you can think of if they can access the right support. Support is not exactly easy to come by, and it is very much a lottery whether support is available to a particular child or not. Progression to any higher education setting by 19 was 25.4 per cent for those with SEN who had more generalised support, and just 9.4 for those who managed to get an education, health, and care plan (EHCP).

Again, the experience of pupils with an EHCP may make it more likely that they apply later on (and thus not feature in their cohort data) – those who do progress often need to top up their level 2 or 3 qualifications before being able to progress to the next level of study, all of which takes time.

But just 1.5 per cent of students with an EHCP, 327 students, progressed to a high tariff provider. To me, that’s a systemic failing.

Regional dimensions

More so than any other characteristic, where you live (and, more germanely, where you go to school) has a huge impact on your educational experience with SEN. In Kensington and Chelsea, 45.5 per cent of students with SEN are in HE by the age of 19. In Thurrock, the figure is more like 10 per cent.

The variation is similar for all students – 71 per cent get to university in Redbridge, 26 per cent in Knowsley.

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But this core variation (which covers everything from socio-economic status to school quality to aspirations) is overlaid by the varying proportions of students with SEN in each area, and the varying levels (and quality) of the support that can be provided.

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Some 23.3 per cent of all students in Middlesbrough have a SEN marker. In Havering the figure is 8.85 per cent (there are some outliers with low numbers of students in total)

What is being done?

As Alex Grady of nasen wrote on the UCAS blog earlier this year, the many misconceptions around SEN indicating some form of “learning difficulty” that makes higher education irrelevant or impossible still persist. Students with SEN very often flourish at university, but the assumption that they will not attend higher education – so thinking around support through and beyond the transition between compulsory education and higher education often happens late or in a piecemeal fashion.

It is comparatively rare for a university to visit a non-mainstream school, or vice-versa. There are many reasons (not least financial) for this not to happen, but there is a clear benefit to introducing students from all settings to a range of post-compulsory routes early and often. Sometimes special schools and other alternate provision partner with larger local schools to make this happen.

Student records do not transition neatly between the compulsory sector and higher education, a situation not helped by the presumption that an EHCP extends to age 25 if you don’t go to university, but ends if they do (this, beautifully, is considered a “positive outcome”). A student may be used to assuming staff understand the best way to support them (as this is what happened at school) and feel uncomfortable or ill-equipped to effectively argue for similar support in HE.

Universities do address this, both in highlighting the support that they offer students and in signposting what is available via the Disabled Students’ Allowance (many students with SEN do not identify themselves as “disabled”, and the variations in terminology are a recognised issue). But schools also have a role to play in preparing students for an application and choice experience that is pretty bewildering for all students.

Additional data

The DfE Widening Participation release is the only place where you get a definition of a “high tariff” provider – in 2023-24 this term referred to higher education providers with a mean tariff of 125.8 or above (last year this was 129.4).

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July 31, 2025
To make real progress on widening participation in higher education, we need a new mission

The promise of higher education as a pathway to opportunity has never been more important, or more precarious.

While overall university participation has reached record levels, this headline figure masks a troubling reality: where you’re born in England increasingly determines whether you’ll ever set foot on a university campus. And even once students do get their foot in the door, they might not have the support system in place – financially as well as academically – to succeed and thrive.

It is in this context that the UPP Foundation has today published the concluding paper in its widening participation inquiry. Mission Critical: six recommendations for the widening participation agenda is our attempt to fill in the gaps that the government left in its opportunity mission around widening participation, and to provide targets and mechanisms by which it can achieve success in this area.

Doing “getting in” right

For years, the biggest single aim of widening participation work has been “getting in” – ensuring that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds are supported to attend university, most often by undertaking a bachelor’s degree as a residential student. The aim of growing participation has come under political scrutiny in recent years and is no longer an accepted mission across the political spectrum.

But as our inquiry’s earlier papers highlight, there remains significant gaps in participation. Although more young people are going to university than ever before, there are stark disparities in the rates at which young people from different parts of the country attend university. If we believe, as I do, that talent is not simply concentrated in London and the South East, then by implication if opportunity is spread out more evenly, participation in higher education needs to grow.

That’s why our first recommendation is a “triple lock” widening participation target. This includes a gap of no more than ten percentage points between the highest and lowest regional HE participation rates; plus a 50 per cent floor for progression to HE at 18-19 across all regions; and a target for 70 per cent of the whole English population to have studied at level 4 or above by the age of 25, as advocated by Universities UK. Meeting these targets will ensure that “getting in” really is for everyone.

Onwards and upwards

But this is not enough in isolation. The people we spoke to in Doncaster and Nottingham made it clear that “getting on” and “getting out” are equally important parts of the widening participation struggle – with the cost of learning a major barrier to full participation in university life.

With that in mind, we’re calling for the restoration of maintenance loans to 2021 real-terms levels by the end of the decade, as well as additional maintenance grants for those eligible for free school meals in the last six years.

We also want universities that are currently spending millions of pounds on bursaries and hardship funds to put that money towards outreach in the most challenging cold spots, as well as ensuring that the wider student experiences that undergrads cherish are available to all. That’s why it makes sense for a proportion of the proceeds from the proposed international student fee levy, if introduced, to be ring fenced to support an expanded access and participation plan regime, prioritising disadvantaged students from cold spot backgrounds.

Revitalisation

Finally, widening participation needs to address the short-term mindset that grips young people both before and during their time at university.

Young people are more mindful of their finances than ever before, with many opting out of university in favour of a job in places where graduate careers are scarce and those who do choose to attend keeping one eye on their present and future earnings even before they’ve graduated.

If we are to revitalise the widening participation agenda, we have to bring employability to the fore, both by reconfiguring the Office for Students’ B3 metric on positive student outcomes and by bringing employers into the design and outputs of university study. There are already fantastic examples of this working in practice across the sector, such as at London South Bank’s energy advice centre and Bristol University’s career- and community-oriented dental school. It’s time for the sector to pick up these ideas and run with them.

The young person in Doncaster with the same grades and aspirations as their counterpart in Surrey faces not just different odds of getting to university, but different expectations about what’s possible. When we fail to address these disparities, we’re not just perpetuating inequality, we’re actively weakening the economic foundations that the whole country depends on.

What our new report offers is a chance to refocus the widening participation agenda around a series of ambitious but achievable targets. Getting in, getting on and getting out are all crucial parts of the higher education cycle, especially for those who otherwise wouldn’t attend. If the government want to take their widening participation priorities seriously, all three aspects need to take their place in the sun.

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July 7, 2025
The crisis in the youth sector is a big problem for universities

It is hard for universities to see beyond their own sector crisis right now, but the crisis facing the youth sector today will be the problem of universities tomorrow.

The youth sector in the UK greatly contributes towards supporting students and graduates of the future, but it is currently under threat and the deepest impact will come for those young people who face the highest barriers to accessing higher education.

The youth sector engages young people to develop their critical skills for life, including how to build relationships with peers; resilience and developing social and emotional skills; and how to integrate into a community. Many within the higher education sector will recognise these as areas which students and graduates are also struggling with.

At a time where universities are being called upon to widen access for young people, the reality is young people are facing narrower opportunities than ever. The challenge for widening participation teams will be multifaceted, including supporting attainment raising in schools; tackling entrenched views from schools and families of expectations of what their children can achieve; and providing the support needed for widening participation students to progress well once in higher education.

So how can the higher education sector help ensure that the challenges the youth sector are facing today don’t become a nightmare for widening participation teams to tackle in the future?

What is happening in the youth sector?

The youth sector includes large organisations such as UK Youth, Scouts and Girlguiding, to smaller grassroots organisations who run clubs and activities in and out of schools and community centres across the country.

There are many similarities between the crises facing the higher education sector and that of the youth sector. Much like universities, the youth sector has faced years of substantial defunding. A YMCA England and Wales report on The state of funding for youth services found that “local authority expenditure on youth services has fallen 73% in England and 27% in Wales since 2010-11” which “represents a real-term cut of £1.2bn to youth services between 2010-11 to 2023-24 in England, and £16.6m in Wales.”

At the same time as these cuts, the rate of young people who are NEET (not in education, employment or training) is growing, with 13.2 per cent of 16-24 year olds reported as NEET in 2024, and 15.6 per cent of 18-24 year olds NEET. Both figures have increased compared to previous years, particularly in young men. These young people need support and youth services are increasingly unable to provide it.

Organisations and charities who have been supporting the youth sector are closing at a rapid rate. The National Citizen Service (NCS), a national youth social action programme which has been running since 2009, has been cut by the Labour Government. Student Hubs, the social action charity I worked with which supported students to engage in social and environmental action, has closed. YMCA George Williams College, an organisation which supported the youth sector to improve monitoring, evaluation and impact of their activities closed on 31 March 2025 to the shock of many across the youth sector.

Whilst the Government’s National Youth Strategy announced in November 2024 is welcome, it will not fix years of systematic underfunding of youth sector services.

How will this crisis impact universities?

David Kernohan’s analysis of the UCAS 2025 application figures shows that applications are down, with only applicants from the most advantaged quintile, IMD quintile 5, having improved. We are in the midst of what could be a big decline in the rate of students coming from disadvantaged backgrounds entering higher education, despite the transformative opportunities it provides.

This comes at a time where there is greater expectation by the government and the regulator for universities to be proactive in supporting students’ and young people’s skills, learning and access to opportunity. In February the Office for Students announced successful providers in their latest funding round to deliver projects which tackle Equality of Opportunity Risk Register areas. The register supports universities to consider barriers in the student life cycle and how they might mitigate against these.

Seeing the range of projects which have been awarded funding, it is clear that universities are being pushed to go further in imagining what their role is in shaping the lives of the students they engage, and it starts significantly earlier than freshers’ week. This funding shows that more emphasis is being put on universities to address barriers to participation by the Office for Students, and with the youth sector in crisis, this may need to become even wider if universities are to fulfil their access missions.

Thankfully, there are actions universities can take now which will make a difference both to young people and widening participation teams.

Tackling the problems together

The youth sector cannot afford to wait. If universities want to be ready to meet the challenges of tomorrow, they need to build strong collaborative relationships with organisations already situated in communities whilst they are still here. Partnership with the youth sector offers an opportunity to enhance university strategic activity whilst making genuine social and economic impact.

Universities could be doing more to provide expertise on monitoring and evaluation of youth activities, enhancing quality of local activities, and conducting research to support future outcomes. There’s an opportunity for universities to learn from these partnerships too, particularly because the youth sector has a range of expertise which is highly applicable to the work the sector is doing in broadening their widening participation and civic strategies. These partnerships will sometimes be informal and sometimes they might be formalised through knowledge exchange programmes like student consultancy.

Students can play a big role in linking universities and youth services. Research conducted by the National Youth Agency in 2024 found “that fewer than seven per cent of respondents to a national survey of youth workers are under 26 years old”. There is a desperate need for youth workers and particularly under-30s to support the sector. Student Hubs’ legacy resources detail the approach we took to supporting students to volunteer in local schools, libraries and community centres to provide free support to young people as part of place-based programmes with universities.

Universities and students’ unions have spaces they are looking to commercialise, whilst also trying to give students jobs on campus. Universities and students’ unions could work collaboratively with community groups to use spaces on campus, provide student work through staffing them, and in turn support young people and families to access campus facilities.

The time is now

One of the hallmarks of a crisis is communities coming together to meet challenges head on, and universities shouldn’t wait to be invited. Trust will need to be built and relationships take time to forge.

The best time to start is now. Universities should mobilise whilst there is still a youth sector left to support, or the void left by the lack of youth services means universities’ involvement in young people’s lives is going to become even larger.

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July 2, 2025
Social mobility needs a whole-university rethink

For more than two decades, widening access has been the sector’s flagship social mobility project. But what if that narrow focus is holding us back?

A new report from the Social Market Foundation, Leave to Achieve?, urges us to think more expansively. Sponsored by the University of Warwick and the University of Southampton, the project was commissioned to recognise and champion the significant work that universities already do to improve social mobility. This report presents a positive picture with some excellent case studies of good practice. Yet we wanted to challenge the status quo by posing a new question of how this role could be further strengthened in an evolving political, economic and demographic landscape.

It’s a timely intervention. In November 2024, the Secretary of State for Education wrote to university leaders setting out five clear priorities: improved access and outcomes for disadvantaged students, stronger civic engagement, enhanced contributions to economic growth, higher teaching standards, and greater financial efficiency. Leave to Achieve? presents a compelling blueprint for how institutions might meet that challenge – not by doing more of the same, but by doing things differently.

Getting in isn’t the same as getting on

Yes, disadvantaged students are more likely to go to university than they were 20 years ago. But gaps remain – especially at high-tariff providers, where the life-changing graduate premium is highest. And even when disadvantaged students do get in, they’re less likely to complete, more likely to graduate with lower-class degrees, and face a persistent class pay gap.

These access gains have also been geographically uneven. In parts of the country, a student’s chances of going to university – let alone a selective one – remain depressingly slim.

This aligns with long-standing evidence from the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission, both of which have consistently highlighted the enduring impact of regional inequality and the limits of “national” mobility narratives. The Social Mobility Commission’s “State of the Nation” reports, for example, show that young people from some post-industrial regions are still far less likely to progress to higher education than their peers elsewhere – despite similar levels of talent and ambition.

The takeaway? Real social mobility is not just about “getting in” – it’s about outcomes, belonging, and fair access to local opportunity.

What about staff?

If universities want to be credible agents of social mobility, we also need to look inward.

The socioeconomic makeup of the university workforce remains largely invisible. Few institutions collect data on the class background of their staff. The 2010 Equality Act doesn’t treat social class as a protected characteristic, so there’s no legal driver to act, and no institutional accountability.

This gap has been highlighted in HEPI’s recent work on equity in academic careers, which shows that the absence of robust data on social class in recruitment and promotion processes limits our ability to understand – and address – barriers to entry and progression in the sector.

But this blind spot matters. Academia as a career is often inaccessible to those without a financial safety net. Structural inequalities in postgraduate progression and insecure early-career contracts compound the problem. If our own workforce doesn’t reflect the diversity we champion in student access, what message does that send?

A civic role still waiting to be realised

We often describe universities as anchor institutions. But Leave to Achieve? finds that civic engagement is still too often a patchwork of well-meaning projects rather than a systemic strategy.

Too few universities are meaningfully embedded in local education and skills ecosystems. Too few are co-producing knowledge with communities. And too many are still seen – particularly in more deprived regions – as distant, elite, and not “for people like us.”

This is not just a moral imperative. It’s a political one. The Secretary of State’s 2024 letter was clear: universities must be more visible and valuable in their localities. Delivering on that expectation will require more than community outreach – it will require rethinking institutional purpose.

The Civic University Network and UPP Foundation’s Civic University Agreements have laid important groundwork here. But Leave to Achieve? argues for more consistent policy incentives and accountability mechanisms that can embed civic engagement as a core strategic function across the sector.

Rethinking research impact

Research and innovation are often positioned as universities’ contribution to economic growth. But what if we rethought them as tools for regional social mobility?

The report argues that embedding social equity in research priorities – not just in outputs, but in who defines the questions and who benefits – can help ensure that innovation serves local communities, not just national agendas.

That also means investing in more diverse academic pipelines, better knowledge exchange structures, and partnerships that extend beyond the usual suspects. The Research England-funded Participatory Research Fund is an example of how the research ecosystem can be better aligned with inclusive growth goals.

So what’s next?

The SMF’s recommendations are pragmatic and targeted: a national strategy for social mobility, delivered through regional structures. Legal recognition of social class in equality legislation. Better socioeconomic workforce data. And, crucially, incentives for local recruitment and regional collaboration.

In short, they point to a version of the future that aligns closely with the government’s own vision – if policymakers are willing to resource it. A recent HEPI blog from the Social Market Foundation’s Dani Payne poses some important questions for universities to consider.

This project wasn’t commissioned to critique, but to catalyse. It’s also about recognising what the sector already does well. From transformative widening participation work and contextual admissions schemes to place-based partnerships and pioneering civic strategies, many universities are already expanding opportunity within their regions and communities.

Collaboration is central to this mission. A renewed social mobility agenda must galvanise universities, colleges, employers, charities, and public sector partners to work together to address local and regional need – creating a coherent, joined-up ecosystem of opportunity that supports people to thrive in the places they call home.

The broader message is this: we need a whole-university approach to social mobility. That means moving beyond access targets to consider our roles as employers, civic actors, and knowledge producers. It means recognising that social mobility is about place as much as potential. And it means being honest about what we haven’t yet achieved.

Our goal now is to ensure this debate doesn’t get lost in the long grass, but to extend an arm to the sector and other key actors to develop a long-term shared mission for social mobility.

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June 25, 2025
Reframing student voice through a rights-based lens
Student voice has never been more central to the higher education conversation.

Across the sector, there’s growing consensus that higher education institutions must not only listen to their students but actively build institutions around their insights and experiences.

Yet, for all the best intentions and sincere efforts, turning student feedback into meaningful, institution-wide change remains a challenge.

At the University of Kent, we’ve been reflecting critically on our own approach. Like many, we’ve long celebrated the volume of student engagement we facilitate, such as surveys, focus groups, informal conversations.

But we’ve come to recognise that collecting feedback isn’t the same as using it, and that celebrating the act of “listening” can sometimes obscure a harder truth – we didn’t always know what to do with what we heard.

Reframing student voice through a rights-based lens

Our turning point came through an unlikely source – the work of Professor Laura Lundy. Originally developed to support children’s rights under Article 12 of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child, Lundy’s model provides a practical framework for ensuring young people’s voices are not only heard, but also acted upon.

It centres around four interdependent elements – Space, Voice, Audience, and Influence.

We began to ask – what if we adapted this model to the higher education widening participation context?

Applying Lundy’s model in this way helped us shift our thinking from engagement as consultation, to engagement as partnership.

It challenged us to ask harder questions about power, process, and accountability in the way we involved underrepresented students in our outreach and access work.

We already had a thriving cohort of over 300 student ambassadors – many young, idealistic, and deeply committed to helping shape a more inclusive university. But too often, when they shared ambitious or creative ideas, we found ourselves retreating behind operational constraints – “That won’t get through the next committee,” or “It’s a great idea, but we don’t have the budget.”

We weren’t dismissing their input out of disinterest, on the contrary, we were invested. But in practice, without the power to act, we were unintentionally reinforcing the idea that their contributions didn’t lead to change.

Feedback gathered with care and enthusiasm was left to languish in reports and spreadsheets. There was no systematic way of translating insight into action, and no clear feedback loop to close the gap.

Space

The development of our new Access and Participation Plan (APP) back in 2023 offered the ideal opportunity to put this into practice. The Office for Students made student involvement a clear expectation and we chose to go beyond compliance.

In partnership with Kent Students’ Union, we launched a Widening Participation Student Advisory Panel, inspired by a successful model from the University of Southampton. We recruited 25 students, most from underrepresented backgrounds, and built a structure that allowed their contributions to be actioned.

Voice

If we wanted students to play a meaningful role in shaping our widening participation strategy, we had to go beyond asking for ideas. We had to equip them to contribute in an informed way.

That meant building knowledge, not just platforms. We didn’t just ask for feedback, we trained them:
- We explained the regulatory context
- We shared internal data and metrics
- We discussed financial constraints and institutional parameters
- We connected them directly to our APP Operations and Steering Groups
Our aim wasn’t to dampen creativity, but to anchor it in context. Students needed to understand the world they were trying to change. That understanding made their input sharper, more strategic, and ultimately more powerful.

Audience

Students invest time and energy into sharing thoughtful feedback. They deserve more than tokenistic “thank yous” or vague assurances that their views have been “noted.”

We took steps to ensure student voice reached the people who could act on it. That meant involving senior leaders and decision-makers in engagement processes, creating spaces where feedback was taken seriously and visibly discussed and being transparent with students about the limits of our authority, namely what we could or couldn’t change.

One of the students was even elected to sit on the operations group itself, ensuring a direct student voice at the decision-making table.

Honesty builds trust. And trust is the foundation of sustained, meaningful student engagement.

Influence

Acting on feedback is only half the equation. The other half is showing that we acted.

We’ve become intentional about creating “You said, we did” moments: making visible the link between student insight and institutional change.

We’ve made sure those changes are not just confined to our team, but acknowledged at all levels – in committees, in strategic plans, and in senior leadership conversations.

Influence should be traceable. Students should be able to see evidence of their ideas across the university.

One powerful example of student-led change is the revision of the Kent Financial Support Package (KFSP), driven directly by student feedback. We co-created the process by modelling different support options and inviting students to choose the approach they felt was most equitable.

While we initially considered concentrating funds among fewer students, students overwhelmingly voiced the importance of broader support, even though this meant slightly lower individual amounts, to ensure more of their peers could benefit.

They also pushed for smaller changes which would make a big difference, including support for students repeating a year and extended eligibility for those who become estranged during their studies.

We listened, we acted, and now they can see their voices reflected in a policy that benefits future students.

From consultation to co-creation

This is still a work in progress.

But adapting Lundy’s model has helped us ask better questions about how we build student voice into the DNA of our widening participation work. It’s helped us move from hearing students views to embedding them into decision-making, and from consultation to co-creation.

If we’re serious about equitable access and success in higher education, then the voices of those most affected must not be optional extras. They must be at the centre, resourced, respected and able to help shape the institutions they are a part of.
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June 25, 2025