Back in April 2020, with all the lovely weather we’d been having, I was yearning for a holiday.
But I wasn’t sure the offer I was reading from a tour operator really stacked up.
“Because of Covid-19”, said the brochure, “by the time your holiday due date arrives we might not be able to get you there and even if you get there yourself, we might not have any of the facilities open. If that’s the case and you book anyway, please note you’ll neither be entitled to a refund nor a discount, but you will get to watch some people swimming in a pool on YouTube. You’ll also be able to join in with our holiday chat on Zoom. And you jolly well better risk booking it – because holidays will be much harder to come by next year!”
It sounded pretty unreasonable to me. And probably unlawful. But someone somewhere in central government appeared to disagree.
In the impact assessment that accompanied the emergency Coronavirus Bill a month previously, officials had explained the implications of the power to close campuses – and as well as discussion on how compensation for universities might work, the section contained this ominous line on students:
Where there are concerns to protect HEPs from being sued for reneging on their consumer protection (and/or contractual) obligations in the event of course closure we believe force majeure would be relevant.
For me, it was that that set the tone for the entire way in which the pandemic was handled when it came to students and universities. The understanding was that students would pay. And they very much did – in more ways than one.
As such, ever since March 2020, I’ve been imagining the moment when a minister or senior civil servant might be called by an inquiry to account for the catalogue of catastrophes that were the handling of higher education during Covid.
I wanted to know if then-universities minister Michelle Donelan really believed that students would succeed if they did as she suggested and made a complaint about quality. I was keen to understand why campuses were being told to operate at 30 per cent capacity while the halls on their edges operated at 100 per cent.
I wanted to know whether DfE’s plan in the run into September really was to get everyone to turn up, stick it out for a few weeks so that the fee liability kicks in, and then blame external factors when the sector inevitably had to shut campuses back down.
I wanted to know why students were consistently left out of financial compensation measures, ignored in guidance and policies, told to pay the rent on properties they were told not to occupy, gaslit over quality and “the student experience”, and repeatedly blamed for transmitting the virus when they’d been threatened with losing their place if they deferred.
Above all, I wanted to know why anyone, at any point, really thought that they should be paying full fees for the isolating omnishambles that they eventually experienced.
I had reason to be optimistic. The UK COVID-19 Inquiry was set up as an independent public inquiry examining the UK’s preparedness and response to the pandemic through multiple modules.
Module 8, which opened in May 2024, was to focus specifically on the impact of the pandemic on children and young people across all four UK nations. Universities and students were included in Module 8 because the inquiry defines “young people” to include those aged 18-25 who attended higher education or training during the pandemic.
It was supposed to examine the full spectrum of educational disruption from early years through to universities, investigating decisions about closures, reopenings, exam cancellations, online learning adaptations, and issues like student isolation in halls of residence, as well as the broader impact on mental health, wellbeing, and long-term consequences for this generation.
Well guess what. Yesterday was the final day of three weeks of testimony from ministers, civil servants, regulators, charities and other experts. And the total number of times that university students have been mentioned? Zero.
Hope springs eternal
If I think back to that March 2020 impact assessment, the logic appeared straightforward – with DfE struggling to extract funding from the Treasury for education, let alone for universities or students, the simplest solution to an assumption that Covid would bankrupt the sector was to ensure fee income continued flowing.
Universities wouldn’t go bust as long as students could be persuaded not to defer en masse, which would have created a difficult demand spike the following year.
The problem was how that was done. By the end of March, all sorts of people were calling for a Big Freeze – a pause to September enrolment. The case was straightfoward – universities couldn’t deliver what they were promising, students couldn’t make informed decisions, and the public health risks were unknown.
But the government’s response was Education Secretary Gavin Williamson announcing in June that there was “absolutely no need for students to defer”, while universities Minister Michelle Donelan told students not to defer because “the labour market will be precarious” and that universities had “perfected their online offer” – despite having only weeks to prepare.
Donelan repeatedly pushed a “business as usual” message, telling prospective students that September would go ahead with perhaps some online teaching but no real disruption worth worrying about. The Department for Education (DfE) published generic FAQs and social media messages encouraging students to enrol as normal, despite universities having no idea what they could actually deliver. Later in the year, Universities UK joined in with a social media campaign that told students going to university that September would show “strength” and that they “refuse to be beaten”.
Meanwhile the Office for Students (OfS) imposed and then repeatedly extended a moratorium on unconditional offers – ostensibly to protect students from being rushed into decisions – but without addressing the fundamental problem that universities couldn’t provide the “material information” required by consumer law about what students would actually receive for their money.
The regulatory system proved entirely inadequate for the crisis. Student Protection Plans, which were supposed to set out risks to continuation of study and mitigation measures, had never been properly enforced and became instantly obsolete. When COVID hit, the regulator made no move to require universities to update their risk assessments, even as financial viability, course delivery, access to facilities and support for disabled students all became dramatically more precarious.
The Competition and Markets Authority’s consumer protection requirements – which clearly stated students must receive what they expected – were essentially ignored, with DfE telling students that as long as “reasonable efforts” and “adequate” alternatives were provided, they shouldn’t expect refunds. Nobody defined what “reasonable” or “adequate” meant in a pandemic, leaving students with no meaningful protections despite paying £9,250 in fees.
The absence of any coordinated national approach left universities making contradictory announcements and students facing impossible choices. Cambridge declared all lectures would be online until summer 2021, while Bolton promised a fully “COVID-secure” campus with temperature scanners and face masks. Both still expected students to move house and live in halls of residence, with no clear government guidance on whether mass student migration was safe or legal under social distancing rules.
There was no extension of maintenance loans despite part-time work vanishing, no student furlough scheme to allow pausing or extending studies, no support for those whose courses couldn’t meaningfully continue, and no plan for accommodation contracts due to start on 1 July.
Students faced being charged full fees for a drastically reduced experience, with no agency over whether to accept major changes to their courses, no compensation mechanisms, and no honest assessment from universities about what would actually be available – all while being told they should “take time to consider their options” and make “well-informed choices” without any reliable information to base those choices on.
Summertime scramble
By June, the absence of any meaningful government planning or support became intolerable. The Office for Students told a student conference that provision needed to be “different but good – not different but bad” but when pressed on what “good” meant, admitted it was a “very good question” and had no answer.
Its baseline standards were expressed only as outcomes-based metrics that would take 18 months to show up in surveys, leaving universities and students with no clarity about minimum acceptable standards for the pandemic era. Its position appeared to be that it would only intervene if there was a major risk to provider finances, not student welfare – representing “provider interest” rather than “student interest”.
The government’s approach to student hardship was even worse. After Chancellor Rishi Sunak repeatedly claimed the government was doing “whatever it takes” for people affected by COVID-19, the Department for Education announced on 4 May a £46 million “support package” for students in financial difficulty.
But this wasn’t new money at all – it was just two months’ worth of existing “student premium” funding that universities were being told they could “repurpose” for hardship funds. The actual sum available was far smaller once you accounted for the fact that much of this funding was already committed or spent on staff costs for widening participation work that hadn’t stopped. In Canada, by contrast, the government announced the equivalent of £736 per month per student until the end of the summer.
As August arrived with weeks to go before term started, the sector lurched towards chaos. Despite OfS CEO Nicola Dandridge demanding in May that students receive “absolute clarity” about what was on offer before confirmation and clearing, and OfS Chair Michael Barber saying on results day that “universities should set out as clearly as possible what prospective students can expect”, the reality was almost total opacity. Most universities were still offering vague “blended” mood music rather than specifics, with course pages unchanged from before the pandemic.
On August 30th, the University and College Union called on universities to “scrap plans” to reopen campuses, warning they could become “the care homes of a second wave”. Independent SAGE had published detailed recommendations on 21 August including mandatory testing, online-only teaching except for essential practical work, and COVID-safe workplace charters – but with students already arriving to quarantine, any changes were impossibly late.
Fresh guidance
Scotland’s guidance emerged on 1 September, but contained no provision for mandatory testing despite weeks of signals that it would be required, and placed responsibility for enforcement of quarantine and disciplinary measures firmly on universities without clarity on their jurisdiction over private accommodation.
Then at precisely 1.18am on Thursday 10 September, the Department for Education published guidance for higher education on reopening buildings and campuses in England – and in many ways, it symbolised handling throughout. It insisted on “provider autonomy” and made clear that “it is for an HE provider, as an autonomous institution” to manage risks, while simultaneously dictating detailed operational requirements.
The responsibility allocation framework seemed systematically designed to deflect blame from government onto universities and students. Despite acknowledging that “mass movement” of students created risk and that Public Health England and local authorities logically should lead outbreak response, the guidance repeatedly assigned universities responsibility for “ensuring students are safe and well looked after” – an impossible mandate for commuter students and adults in private accommodation.
The testing infrastructure was inadequate and contradictory – walk-through test sites weren’t going to be ready until late October, asymptomatic testing was restricted due to “national strain on testing capacity,” all while universities were warned against running their own testing programs due to complex legal obligations. Contact tracing guidance had obvious holes, particularly compared to Scottish requirements, and did nothing to address the myriad disincentives students faced in getting tested or self-isolating.
The most damning part was arguably the government’s fatalistic acceptance that outbreaks would occur while simultaneously allowing the “mass migration” to proceed. Both SAGE analysis and the guidance itself acknowledged that increased infections and outbreaks were “highly likely,” yet the entire year could have been “default online.” The government was “doing all it can” while creating the very conditions guaranteed to spread the virus, then pre-allocating blame to students and universities.
Mental health support amounted to telling autonomous institutions they were “best placed” to handle it themselves, backed by that £256 million that was actually a cut from the previous year’s £277 million – only accessible by making swingeing cuts elsewhere. The guidance exempted halls of residence from gathering limits without explaining why publicly, mentioned nothing about the 200,000 students in private halls, and dumped international student hardship onto universities despite “no recourse to public funds” rules.
Overall, the government’s handling of the student return to campus in September 2020 was marked by confusion, contradictions and last-minute changes that left universities and students scrambling. Key regulations like the “rule of six” were published at 23:44 on 13 September – just 16 minutes before they came into force – giving institutions no time to communicate changes to students despite DfE saying providers were “responsible” for ensuring awareness.
The lack of clarity extended to fundamental questions like what constituted a “household” in student accommodation – with profound implications for who could socialise with whom, who had to self-isolate and whether students could return home at weekends – yet no clear legal definition was provided despite fines of up to £10,000 being threatened.
Different ministers gave contradictory guidance on who was responsible for refunds and financial support – with Nicola Dandridge saying it was a matter for government, Number 10 saying it was a matter for universities and Gavin Williamson suggesting students could complain through the Office for Students.
By now, the Secretary of State was repeatedly claiming that £256 million was available for hardship funding when this was actually existing student premium funding that had been cut in May, and trumpeted £100 million for digital access that turned out to be a schools fund covering perhaps 650 care leavers worth around £195,000 in total.
SAGE advice to government warned that a national coordinated outbreak response strategy was urgently needed, that universities should provide dedicated accommodation for isolation and that enhanced testing would be required for clusters. None of this made it into DfE guidance. Instead public health teams were left to improvise, leading to entire buildings of 500 students being locked down when the “household” concept collapsed, while students who actually had Covid were legally allowed to travel home to self-isolate there.
The quality of data and assumptions going into SAGE about student behaviour was poor – minutes from September meetings showed “low confidence and poor evidence base” yet still concluded students posed risks of transmission, particularly at Christmas when they would “return home” – a framing that completely ignored commuter students and those who travelled home every weekend.
And we’re off
As term began, research from Canada and the US suggested reopening campuses substantially increased community infections, yet the government pushed ahead without adequate testing infrastructure in place – with even Dido Harding admitting to Parliament that Test and Trace had failed to predict demand from students despite the obvious likelihood of “Freshers’ Flu” generating testing requests.
Students were singled out for treatment that was stricter than other citizens yet without equivalent support – expected to self-isolate without access to the financial cushions available to others, unable to claim Universal Credit, threatened with £10,000 fines and faced with university disciplinary action including expulsion.
Universities Scotland announced students must avoid all socialising outside their households and not go to bars or hospitality venues – a “voluntary lockdown” that was later rowed back as merely a “request” after it caused uproar. Meanwhile Exeter implemented a “soft lockdown” asking only students not to meet indoors with other households, and Scotland threatened to prevent students returning home at weekends – measures that had never appeared in any government guidance or playbook yet were being invented on the fly by local officials.
The sector was essentially told to operate minimum security prisons while still charging full fees for an experience that bore no resemblance to what had been promised, with no clarity on legal rights to refunds despite the Competition and Markets Authority having provided detailed guidance on partial refunds for other sectors like weddings and nurseries. The fundamental question of what students were supposed to do all week beyond online lectures was never answered – and the predictable result was isolation, mental health crises and outbreaks that vindicated warnings the sector had been making since summer.
By October, a cascade of evidence had emerged showing fundamental government failures in managing the return of students to universities. The central mistake was allowing student accommodation to operate at 100 per cent capacity whilst carefully reducing every other setting to around 30 per cent, including lecture theatres, libraries, corridors, catering outlets, shops, bars, public transport and social spaces. SAGE had warned as early as September that housing posed major transmission risks due to large household sizes, high density occupancy, poor quality housing and poor ventilation.
Despite commissioning advice from SAGE on the role of housing in transmission, neither the Department for Education nor the Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government acted on recommendations to reduce occupied density. DfE had asked for specific guidance on student accommodation as early as 8 July, yet the resulting advice failed to implement SAGE’s core recommendation that “we really ought to have been reducing occupied density”.
Ministers instead expected students to spend carefully distanced time on campus for three or four hours weekly, but for the rest of the week to remain in spaces “never designed to be used this intensively, with inevitable results”.
The government rejected crucial scientific advice at multiple points. On 21 September, SAGE recommended that “all university and college teaching to be online unless face-to-face teaching is absolutely essential” as part of a package to reverse exponential rises in cases, estimating this would reduce the R number by 0.3. Ministers explicitly rejected this recommendation, with universities minister Michelle Donelan maintaining the line that “we decided to prioritise education”, despite students being confined to online learning in tiny rooms anyway.
The government also failed to implement mass testing strategies recommended by both SAGE and the CDC, despite promising repeatedly to deliver testing capacity. Students requiring self-isolation received no financial support, being excluded from the £500 Test and Trace Support Payment available to other citizens on low incomes, with most local authorities refusing to include students in discretionary schemes.
SAGE had explicitly warned that “students in quarantine require substantial support from their institution during the period” and that “failing to provide support will lead to distress, poor adherence and loss of trust”, yet the government provided no funding beyond expecting universities to redirect existing hardship funds.
Jingle bells
As the country looked to Christmas, no UK-wide coordination existed for managing student migration, with four-nations discussions chaired by Michael Gove only beginning in late October. Guidance on safely managing returns remained unpublished throughout October despite ministers knowing since March that student migration posed transmission risks.
Students fell through gaps between departments, with DfE, MHCLG and DWP unable to agree responsibility for financial support, testing strategies or housing standards. Working students in hospitality and retail lost employment income but found themselves excluded from benefits, discretionary payments and adequate hardship fund support, with some resorting to commercial credit to pay rent arrears.
As Christmas got closer, the government’s handling of higher education descended into a familiar pattern of late guidance, ignored scientific advice and policy decisions designed to avoid financial liability. DfE repeatedly issued vague guidance that left universities to make difficult decisions about face-to-face teaching – explicitly to avoid being drawn into fee refund claims – while ministers like Michelle Donelan insisted that “blended learning” must continue despite SAGE’s repeated recommendations to move teaching online.
When guidance on Christmas travel and January’s return finally emerged, it came so late that universities couldn’t meaningfully prepare, and students faced impossible choices between physical and mental health. Office for National Statistics data revealed that 65 per cent of students in mid-November were receiving zero hours of face-to-face teaching – despite government rhetoric about prioritising in-person education – while student anxiety levels (6.5 out of 10) dramatically exceeded the general population (4.3 out of 10).
The government’s failure to address accommodation density became undeniable when Public Health Scotland published evidence that traditional halls of residence with “households” of up to 30 people had fuelled transmission, with almost 3,000 cases associated with student accommodation and the majority occurring in a three-week period in September-October.
Students described having to remain in small rooms without access to food, fresh air or exercise during self-isolation, with some international students arriving to empty buildings with no support, no SIM card to order food and no meaningful mental health provision despite contractual promises.
The government’s solution for Christmas was to create complex household bubble rules that meant some families with multiple students away from home couldn’t all gather together, while hundreds of international students and care leavers faced spending the entire break isolated in university towns with no meaningful support beyond opened canteens where they still couldn’t mix with others.
Auld lang syne
As the new year approached, the government announced a “staggered return” that would see some students barred from returning to paid-for accommodation for up to nine weeks, with no rent rebates offered – and Minister Donelan explicitly telling universities that “any issue about accommodation is for the universities to address with students”. The mass testing programme was revealed to have serious efficacy problems – with one study suggesting the lateral flow tests detected just over 3 per cent of cases – and participation rates of around 7 per cent in Scotland.
Despite mounting evidence about the failure to deliver “blended learning”, worsening mental health and the concentration of infection in accommodation rather than teaching spaces, ministers continued to frame policy around getting students “back to campus” while simultaneously telling them to stay away, creating a chaotic situation where students couldn’t plan, universities couldn’t prepare and the January term faced collapse before it began.
By January 2021, the government had announced that some students could return to campus, but the policy was riddled with problems from the start. Michelle Donelan’s attempt to specify eligible subjects using HeCOS vocabulary was marred by missing code numbers and duplications, and ignored both professional bodies’ actual requirements and basic public health principles. The Department for Education essentially determined which campuses would see large student numbers purely by virtue of subject mix – meaning some universities like King’s College London expected over 6,500 students while others like LSE had virtually none.
Worse still, the policy showed no consideration of local Covid case rates, with the data showing numerous providers expecting large numbers of “tranche one” students in areas with high infection prevalence. No professional body was actually insisting students be on campus during a “terrifying third phase of a pandemic” – yet the government was.
The legal restrictions that came into force on 5th January created even more chaos. Nothing in the regulations actually changed specifically for higher education, yet guidance from DfE contradicted existing legal exemptions – for example, insisting that campus catering had to be takeaway only when the law explicitly allowed “cafes or canteens at a higher education provider” to open.
The movement rules allowed students studying away from home to move back to their student housing before 8th February, yet DfE guidance urged them to stay away – creating a situation where students were being told they couldn’t use properties they were legally entitled to occupy and were being forced to pay rent on.
Meanwhile, emerging research painted a terrifying picture that government policy largely ignored. Cambridge’s genomics work suggested little transmission between students and the wider community in their specific context, but a separate study of 30 universities found that 17 campus outbreaks translated directly into peaks of infection in their home counties within two weeks.
The government’s lateral flow testing programme was riddled with problems. Data from Scotland’s pre-Christmas exercise showed that 28.5 per cent of positive lateral flow tests were false positives when PCR-confirmed – yet the government then removed the requirement for PCR confirmation in England in February, potentially causing thousands to self-isolate unnecessarily while eliminating the data needed to assess test accuracy.
Research showed the type of test mattered enormously and that high participation rates were key to any testing programme’s success, yet participation in university testing remained abysmal – in one week in February just 100,000 tests were conducted across English higher education, suggesting only around 2.5 per cent of students were being tested despite government insistence on twice-weekly screening. The cost per positive result in community testing was around £20,000 when prevalence was low, and the government appeared to have learned nothing from the pre-Christmas pilot about why students weren’t engaging.
On accommodation, ministers merely “urged” landlords to offer rent rebates while keeping students away from campuses, refusing to underwrite rebates or mandate them. And the government’s handling of vaccination access created additional problems – students studying away from home could only access vaccines where their GP was registered, but the NHS insisted students could only be registered with one GP at a time. It meant that students isolating at home due to health conditions were offered vaccines at their university address hundreds of miles away, creating impossible choices.
Summertime sadness
As the term continued, universities minister Michelle Donelan repeatedly told parliament that the Office for Students was “actively monitoring” the quality of provision and that students dissatisfied with teaching could complain to the OIA for potential refunds. But OfS confirmed it wasn’t monitoring quality in any meaningful sense – it had merely made some calls to universities in tier 3 areas – and the OIA re-clarified that it couldn’t adjudicate on academic quality matters. The disconnect between ministerial assurances and regulatory reality left students without the redress mechanisms they had been promised.
Similarly, the government’s approach to student return dates proved chaotic – initially planning for staggered returns from mid-February, then pushing back to March 8th for only “practical” courses, then suggesting a review “by the end of Easter holidays” for everyone else. By May, the government confirmed remaining students could return from Step 3 on May 17th – by which point teaching had largely finished for most.
The maintenance loan system created further problems – initially, officials planned to reassess loans downward for students no longer in their term-time accommodation, despite many still paying rent. Only after intervention was this policy reversed, with “overpayments” instead added to loan balances. Meanwhile, students on courses requiring practical work faced significant challenges – many would be “unable to complete” without access to facilities yet received no extensions to maintenance support or additional hardship funding.
The graduate employment situation was similarly neglected, with unemployment among recent graduates rising to 18 per cent for both graduates and non-graduates, reaching 33.7 per cent for young Black graduates. The government’s response was merely to create a six-step collection of weblinks hosted on the OfS website rather than meaningful job guarantee schemes or funded postgraduate study.
A failure to learn
There are so many other aspects I haven’t covered here, and so many more issues I’d have loved to see ministers account for. The international student experience deserves its own inquiry – from those trapped abroad unable to access online teaching due to time zones and VPNs, to those who arrived to empty campuses having paid flights and deposits they couldn’t recover.
The impact on disabled students who lost access to essential support services. The postgraduate researchers who saw years of lab work destroyed or delayed. The creative arts students paying full fees for courses they literally couldn’t do from their bedrooms. The teaching quality collapse that was dismissed as “blended learning”. The mental health crisis that was met with a cut to support funding dressed up as additional help. The list is almost endless.
But even if all these issues had been put to ministers at the inquiry, even if we’d heard testimony about employment, housing, transport, testing, health, isolation support, and student finances, we’d likely have faced the same problem we always do with students and higher education. Just as we see outside of pandemics, other government departments simply don’t think about students.
They’re not on the radar at the Treasury, at MHCLG, at DWP, at DHSC. Students fall through the gaps between departmental responsibilities, and the Department for Education – already stretched covering schools, further education, and early years – doesn’t have the influence, the power, or the capacity to force the student interest to be considered in decisions made elsewhere.
When Test and Trace payments were designed, nobody thought about students. When furlough was created, nobody thought about students. When housing regulations were written, nobody thought about students. And DfE either didn’t notice – or couldn’t do anything about it.
The problem is that if the decisions aren’t examined, the lessons won’t be learned. And there are crucial lessons that go far beyond the specifics of this pandemic.
The first is about responsibility and coordination. Throughout the entire saga, nobody seemed to be in charge. Was it DfE setting the policy? Was it universities exercising their autonomy? Was it local public health teams managing outbreaks? Was it MHCLG regulating housing? The answer appeared to be all of them and none of them, with each able to blame the others when things went wrong.
The tension between treating universities as autonomous institutions who should be “free” to make decisions, and then dictating detailed operational requirements while disclaiming responsibility for the outcomes, was never resolved. The sector demanded provider autonomy and then was sore when society blamed providers when they made autonomous decisions that some didn’t like.
Second, there’s the fundamental question of whether universities are part of the education system or something else entirely. They were conspicuously left out of education prioritisation decisions, treated neither as essential education that should continue (like schools) nor as adults who could make their own choices (like the general population).
Instead they occupied a weird middle ground where they were expected to operate like big schools – following government guidance, prioritising in-person education, being “responsible” for students – but with none of the government support or coordination that schools received. Students were simultaneously infantilised (being told they couldn’t be trusted to socialise responsibly) and abandoned (being told they were autonomous adults who should sort out their own problems).
Third, the pattern of guidance arriving impossibly late – or not at all – for me was a systematic failure to (scenario) plan. Regulations published 16 minutes before coming into force. Christmas travel guidance arriving when students had already booked transport. January return policies announced in December. Testing strategies finalised after students arrived. It wasn’t just poor planning – it was policy-making that appeared designed to avoid being pinned down, to maintain government flexibility at the expense of everyone else’s ability to prepare. And crucially, it was lateness that consistently disadvantaged students while protecting government and institutions from liability.
Fourth, the entire approach suggested to me an implicit hierarchy where protecting university finances trumped protecting students. That impact assessment in March 2020 said the quiet part out loud – force majeure would be relevant because universities had to be protected from being sued for breaking their consumer obligations.
Everything else flowed from that – encouraging enrolment even when delivery was uncertain, maintaining full fees regardless of quality, shifting hardship costs onto universities through repurposed funding, avoiding clear guidance that might create refund obligations, and telling students to complain to regulators who couldn’t actually help them. The system was designed to keep money flowing, not to deliver value or protect students.
And fifth, regulatory failure was baked in from the start. In England, the Office for Students proved entirely unfit for purpose in a crisis – unable to define quality standards, unwilling to intervene on student welfare, focused on provider finances rather than student interests, and apparently content to let ministers mislead Parliament about the protections it was providing. The gap between what ministers promised (monitoring, complaints routes, refunds) and what regulators could actually deliver left students without redress at the precise moment they needed it most.
None of these lessons are being learned because none of these decisions are being examined. And perhaps that absence reflects something deeper. Everyone involved – universities, the Office for Students, the Department for Education, ministers – were invested in suggesting that what was planned would work, was working, and did work. Partly that was about reputation. Partly it was about liability. Partly it was about avoiding the cost of refunds.
But the effect was the same – it prevented and continues to prevent any honest reckoning about what didn’t work, who was failed, who was damaged, and who was let down. That, on Radio 4’s More or Less a few weeks ago, I couldn’t answer the question how much learning had been lost, or what the impacts were on students, should be a source of deep national shame.
Admitting the scale of the failure would’ve meant admitting the scale of what was owed. But instead we got a collective fiction that “blended learning” was comparable to what students had signed up for, that online education from bedroom prisons was a reasonable substitute for the university experience, that students complaining about quality were just being difficult. The investment in that fiction has been so total that even now, when the statutory inquiry is supposed to be learning lessons, it can’t examine what actually happened – because the evidence on impacts is so thin.
Again and again
It’s worth saying that everyone almost certainly did their best in impossible circumstances. From university staff pivoting to online teaching overnight, to SU officers running Zoom pub quizzes to combat isolation, to professional services teams working around the clock to support students in crisis – there were countless unsung heroes who made it all a little less miserable. Nobody wanted this. Nobody planned for it. Everyone was doing what they could with the resources and guidance available. And that deserves recognition.
But the truth is that once students are paying individually for higher education – once it became a consumer market with £9,250 fees and interest-bearing loans and the language of student choice and value for money – doing your best isn’t enough. If you can’t deliver what was promised, “we tried our best” doesn’t cut it when someone is personally £50,000 in debt for the privilege.
The hyper-marketisation of higher education came with consumer protections and Competition and Markets Authority guidelines and material information requirements precisely because students weren’t just participating in education anymore – they were purchasing it. Neither the sector nor the government can have it both ways. You can’t charge consumer prices and then claim education is special and different when it comes to consumer rights.
You can make a reasonable case in other policy areas about whether central government or local authorities or devolved administrations or individual departments should be in charge of this budget or that decision. There are legitimate debates about the boundaries of autonomy and accountability, about who’s best placed to make decisions about housing or testing or public health interventions.
But what I can’t get over – and what I don’t think we should let anyone forget – is the assumption that was there from the very beginning, baked into that March 2020 impact assessment and every decision that followed – that students would pay for pretty much everything that was done to them, and everything that wasn’t done for them.
They’d pay full fees for reduced teaching. They’d pay rent on accommodation they were told not to use. They’d pay for support services that were closed. They’d pay for facilities they couldn’t access. They’d pay for an experience that bore no resemblance to what they’d signed up for. They’d pay for the privilege of being locked in their rooms, blamed for spreading a virus, threatened with fines and expulsion, excluded from the financial support available to everyone else, and told to be grateful that university was happening at all.
And pay they did. While being gaslit about quality, lied to about protections, and blamed for their own misery.
As Kate Ansty of the Child Poverty Action Group said in her oral evidence, to protect inside a pandemic, we must protect outside a pandemic. And as Sir John Cole said in his oral evidence, young people have played their part – society owes them a debt. Not the other way around.
If another pandemic happens, or another national emergency that affects higher education, I fear that exactly the same mistakes will be made. We still won’t know who’s in charge. Government will still treat universities as simultaneously autonomous and controlled. It will still issue guidance too late for anyone to use it. It will still prioritise institutional finances over student welfare. It will still leave students excluded from support available to everyone else. We’ll still have regulators who can’t regulate.
And students will still be blamed for the consequences of decisions made for them, about them, and without them.
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Laura Ascione is the Editorial Director at eSchool Media. She is a graduate of the University of Maryland’s prestigious Philip Merrill College of Journalism.
High school students who combine dual enrollment courses with Advanced Placement or International Baccalaureate programs are significantly more likely to graduate from college and earn higher salaries in their early twenties than peers who pursue only one type of accelerated coursework, according to a new report from the Community College Research Center.
File photoThe study, which tracked Texas high school students expected to graduate in 2015-16 and 2016-17 for six years after high school, found that 71% of students who took both dual enrollment and AP/IB courses earned a postsecondary credential within six years—including 60% who completed a bachelor’s degree. By comparison, only 10% of students who took no accelerated coursework completed any postsecondary credential.
“Most dual enrollment students in Texas also take other accelerated courses, and those who do tend to have stronger college and earnings trajectories,” said Dr.Tatiana Velasco, CCRC senior research associate. “It’s a pattern we hadn’t fully appreciated before, which offers clues for how to expand the benefits of dual enrollment to more students.”
The financial benefits of combining accelerated programs extend well beyond graduation. Students who took both dual enrollment and AP/IB courses earned an average of $10,306 per quarter at age 24—more than $1,300 per quarter above students who took dual enrollment alone and nearly $1,400 per quarter more than those who took only AP/IB courses.
These advantages persisted even after researchers controlled for student demographics, test scores, and school characteristics, suggesting the combination of programs provides genuine educational value rather than simply reflecting differences in student backgrounds.
While the study revealed promising outcomes for students combining dual enrollment with career and technical education programs, participation in this pathway remains critically low. Fewer than 5% of students combine a CTE focus—defined as taking 10 or more CTE courses—with dual enrollment.
Yet those who do show remarkable success. By age 24, dual enrollment students with a CTE focus earned an average of $9,746 per quarter, substantially more than CTE-focused students who didn’t take dual enrollment ($8,097) and second only to the dual enrollment/AP-IB combination group.
The findings suggest a significant missed opportunity, particularly for students seeking technical career paths who could benefit from early college exposure while building specialized skills.
The report highlights concerning equity gaps in accelerated coursework access. Students who combine dual enrollment with AP/IB courses are less diverse than those taking AP/IB alone, raising questions about which students have opportunities to maximize the benefits of accelerated learning.
Early college high schools present a partial solution to this challenge. These specialized schools, where students can earn an associate degree while completing high school, serve more diverse student populations than other accelerated programs. Their graduates complete associate degrees at higher rates and earn more than Texas students overall by age 21. However, early college high schools serve only 5% of Texas students statewide.
With less than 40% of Texas students without accelerated coursework enrolling in any postsecondary institution, and only one in five Texas students taking dual enrollment, researchers see substantial room for expansion.
The report’s authors recommend that K-12 districts and colleges work to expand dual enrollment participation while ensuring these programs complement rather than compete with AP/IB offerings. They also call for increased access to dual enrollment for CTE students and additional support structures to promote student success in college-level coursework during high school.
About one in four teachers say their schools don’t give students zeroes. And nearly all of them hate it.
The collection of practices known as equitable grading, which includes not giving students zeroes, not taking off points for lateness, and letting students retake tests, has spread in the aftermath of the pandemic. But it wasn’t known how widespread the practices were.
A new nationally representative survey released Wednesday finds equitable grading practices are fairly common, though nowhere near universal. More than half of K-12 teachers said their school or district used at least one equitable grading practice.
The most common practice — and the one that drew the most heated opposition in the fall 2024 survey — is not giving students zeroes for missing assignments or failed tests. Just over a quarter of teachers said their school or district has a no-zeroes policy.
Around 3 in 10 teachers said their school or district allowed students to retake tests without penalty, and a similar share said they did not deduct points when students turned in work late. About 1 in 10 teachers said they were not permitted to factor class participation or homework into students’ final grades.
Only 6% of teachers said their school used four or more equitable grading practices.
That was surprising to Adam Tyner, who co-authored the new report for the Thomas B. Fordham Institute, a conservative think tank, in partnership with the RAND Corporation, a nonprofit research organization. He expected more schools would be following a “whole package” of grading reforms supported by advocates like former teacher and education consultant Joe Feldman, who wrote the influential book “Grading for Equity.”
Proponents of equitable grading say it’s important for students to be able to show what they know over time, and that just a few zeroes averaged into a grade can make it difficult for students to ever catch up. When students don’t see a path to passing a class, it can make them less motivated or stop trying altogether.
Eight in 10 teachers said giving students partial credit for assignments they didn’t turn in was harmful to student engagement. Opposition to no-zeroes policies came from teachers of various racial backgrounds, experience levels, and who worked with different demographics of students.
No-zeroes policies can take various forms but often mean that the lowest possible grade is a 50 on a 100-point scale. Some schools use software that will automatically convert lower grades to a 50, one teacher wrote on the survey.
Schools that enrolled mostly students of color were more likely to have no-zeroes policies, the survey found. And middle schools were more likely than high schools and elementary schools to have no-zeroes policies, no-late-penalty policies, and retake policies.
Researchers weren’t sure why those policies popped up more in middle schools.
But Katherine Holden, a former middle school principal in Oregon’s Ashland School District who trains school districts on equitable grading practices, has some guesses.
High schools may be more worried that changing their grading practices will make it harder for students to get into college, Holden said — a misconception in her eyes. And districts may see middle schoolers as especially likely to benefit from things like clear grading rubrics and multiple chances to show what they know, as they are still developing their organization and time-management skills.
In the open-ended section of the survey, several teachers expressed concerns that no-zeroes policies were unfair and contributed to low student motivation.
“Students are now doing below-average work or no work at all and are walking out with a C or B,” one teacher told researchers.
“Most teachers can’t stand the ‘gifty fifty,’” said another.
More than half of teachers said letting students turn in work late without any penalty was harmful to student engagement.
“[The policy] removes the incentive for students to ever turn work in on time, and then it becomes difficult to pass back graded work because of cheating,” one teacher said.
But teachers were more evenly divided on whether allowing students to retake tests was harmful or not.
“Allowing retakes without penalty encourages a growth mindset, but it also promotes avoidance and procrastination,” one teacher said.
Another said teachers end up grading almost every assignment more than once because students have no reason to give their best effort the first time.
The report’s authors recommend getting rid of blanket policies in favor of letting individual teachers make those calls. Research has shown that other grading reforms, such as grading written assignments anonymously or using grading rubrics, can reduce bias.
Still, teachers don’t agree on the best approach to grading. In the survey, 58% of teachers said it was more important to have clear schoolwide policies to ensure fair student grading — though the question didn’t indicate what that policy should look like — while the rest preferred using their professional judgment.
“There are ways to combat bias, there are ways to make grading more fair, and we’re not against any of that,” Tyner said. “What we’re really concerned about is when we’re lowering standards, or lowering expectations. … Accountability is always a balancing act.”
Nicole Paxton, the principal of Mountain Vista Community School, a K-8 school in Colorado’s Harrison School District 2, has seen that balancing act in action.
Her district adopted a policy a few years ago that requires teachers to grade students on a 50-100 scale. Students get at least a 50% if they turn in work, but they get a “missing” grade if they don’t do the assignment. Middle and high schoolers are allowed to make up missing or incomplete assignments. But it has to be done within the same quarter, and teachers can deduct up to 10% for late assignments.
Paxton thinks the policy was the right move for her district. She says she’s seen it motivate kids who are struggling to keep trying, when before they stopped doing their work because they didn’t think they could ever bounce back from a few zeroes.
“As adults, in the real world, we get to show what we know and learn in our careers,” Paxton said. “And I think that kids are able to do that in our building, too.”
Chalkbeat is a nonprofit news site covering educational change in public schools.
I can’t be the only person to have been shocked that 1.5 per cent of respondents to OfS’ NSS extension on harassment and sexual misconduct said they’d been in an intimate personal relationship with a member of university staff in the past year.
Nor, notwithstanding the sampling issues, can I have been the only one to have been alarmed that of those relationships, 68.8 per cent said that the staff member was involved with their education or assessment.
A few weeks ago now over on LinkedIn, former Durham psychology prof and harassment and sexual misconduct expert Graham Towl triggered a bit of debate.
Having asserted that, to his knowledge, no university had initiated an outright ban on intimate personal relationships between staff and students, a whole raft of respondents appeared to tell him he was wrong – at least when it came to their university.
So I checked. And sadly, whatever their perceptions, almost all of said contributors were mistaken. There’s plenty of strong discouragement, a lot of bans where there’s a supervisory relationship, but not a lot of policies that actually respond to what students want – which is for university to be one of the few settings where they’re not pestered for sex.
Anna Bull’s work on professional boundaries couldn’t be any clearer, really. Two studies surveying students about staff-student relationships show that the vast majority of students – at least 75 per cent – are uncomfortable with teaching staff having sexual or romantic relationships with students.
The research examined both “sexualized interactions” (such as dating or romantic relationships) and “personal interactions” (like adding students on social media or drinking with them). Notably, there were no differences in attitudes between undergraduate and postgraduate students, suggesting that different policies for different levels of study may not be justified.
Women students were considerably more uncomfortable than men with both sexualized and personal interactions from staff, no doubt reflecting their heightened awareness of potential sexual harassment and intrusion. Black and Asian students also reported greater discomfort with personal interactions than white students, which researchers linked to preferences for greater professionalism and concerns about culturally inappropriate settings like pub meetings.
The findings point towards establishing clear professional boundaries in higher education to create a more inclusive and comfortable learning environment for diverse student groups. So why hasn’t that happened?
Power imbalance
Since August 1st, the Office for Students (OfS) has required universities to implement one or more steps that could make a “significant and credible difference” in protecting students from conflicts of interest and abuse of power in intimate personal relationships between relevant staff members and students.
While a complete ban on those relationships is deemed to meet this requirement, it is not mandatory – providers can alternatively adopt other measures such as requiring staff to disclose relationships, managing academic interactions to prevent unfair advantage or disadvantage, ensuring students can report harassment through alternative channels, and providing appropriate training on professional boundaries.
If providers choose not to ban relationships, they have to actively manage any actual or potential conflicts of interest. Conversely, if they do implement a ban, breaches must result in disciplinary action through usual processes, including the possibility of dismissal.
The policy must apply to “relevant staff members” – those with direct academic or professional responsibilities for students, including lecturers, supervisors, personal tutors, and pastoral support staff. And OfS expects providers to regularly review their approach based on evidence of prevalence, consultation with students, and the effectiveness of measures in place, adjusting policies as necessary to ensure student protection.
That’s the bare minimum – but save for that stuff on “training on professional boundaries”, the problem has always been that it partly misses the point. Both OfS’ Condition E6 and several of the policies I’ve read since August 1st seem to suggest that intimate personal relationships between staff and students are somehow inevitable, or will just “happen”.
But someone has to initiate them. Is it really too much to ask that higher education will be a space where students can get on with their lives without that initiation? Apparently it is.
And if we’re looking more broadly at the professional boundaries that students think should exist, I can say with some confidence that they’re barely addressed at all in the policies I’ve seen.
Between August 1st and October 16 this year, I’ve been using the odd break to search for what universities in England have done, or continue to do, in this space via what is supposed to be an easy-to-find “single source of information” on harassment and sexual misconduct. The difficulty in finding information in some cases is a different article, and in some cases searches might have surfaced old policies or rules that have since been updated.
But having reached York St John University down the alphabetical list, I think I can now say what I can see. And it’s pretty disappointing.
Ban or regulate?
A clear minority of English universities now operate we might define as a total “ban” – prohibiting intimate relationships between staff and students, allowing only excluded pre-existing relationships, and making breach subject to disciplinary sanction up to dismissal.
Those operating a ban between relevant staff members and students have moved decisively beyond the traditional “discourage and disclose” model, recognising that a prohibition sends a clearer message about acceptable professional conduct than a register that implicitly frames relationships as permissible if declared.
But the vast majority of providers continue to run hybrid disclosure-and-mitigation regimes. These typically prohibit relationships where staff have direct academic, supervisory or pastoral responsibility whilst requiring declaration elsewhere so conflicts can be managed.
Some variants include mandatory disclosure forms, formal HR records, automatic removal of responsibilities, and explicit disciplinary consequences. Weaker implementations rely on cultural expectations of disclosure with what read like vague enforcement mechanisms.
Definitional inconsistencies and structural complexities
Policy complexity and inconsistency remain significant compliance risks. E6’s definition of “relevant staff member” extends beyond academic roles to include pastoral advisers, complaints handlers, and security personnel, yet plenty of policies restrict prohibitions to “teaching” or “supervisory” staff. That narrower scope risks under-compliance, particularly given the condition’s emphasis on addressing “direct professional responsibilities” broadly conceived.
The challenge is then compounded by the increasingly blurred boundaries of contemporary academic work. Academic casualisation means many staff occupy ambiguous positions – postgraduate students who teach undergraduates, visiting fellows with limited institutional attachment, or part-time lecturers working across multiple institutions. Hybrid roles complicate traditional staff-student distinctions and create enforcement challenges that policies rarely acknowledge explicitly.
Similarly, institutions vary widely in defining “intimate personal relationship.” Some focus narrowly on romantic and sexual connections, whilst others encompass emotional intimacy or even brief encounters. The definitional variation undermines the sector’s ability to provide consistent protection – and creates real confusion for staff and students moving between institutions.
Disciplinary frameworks
E6 explicitly requires that breaches of relationship bans be actionable under disciplinary codes with the possibility of dismissal. Many policies use hedged language – “may be subject to disciplinary processes” – without clearly linking to dismissal procedures. This vagueness reads like a compliance gap, given the condition demands visible enforceability rather than implied consequences.
More fundamentally, some universities fail to integrate relationship policies with their harassment and sexual misconduct frameworks, treating consensual relationships as a separate administrative matter rather than a safeguarding issue. The siloed approach risks missing the connection between power abuse in relationships and broader patterns of misconduct.
Meanwhile, even where I found the “single comprehensive source of information”, there were publication gaps. Multiple providers either don’t publish any staff-student relationship policies or fragment them across HR documents, safeguarding procedures, and harassment frameworks. It makes it impossible for students to locate the unified information that E6 demands.
And even where policies exist, they often read as HR-focused documents with limited student-facing clarity. E6 expects providers to communicate that students can report misconduct within relationships, will not be penalised for participating in permitted relationships, and will be protected from retaliation. Few policies include explicit student-facing assurances on these points – they’re largely staff-facing. Students won’t know what they can and can’t expect.
Maybe it’s the lack of student engagement. E6 encourages providers to gather evidence, review complaints data, and consult students when setting policy. Very few institutions mention regular review cycles or evidence of student consultation in developing their approach. Over the past two weeks, just two of the 35 SUs I’ve spoken to have been shared the institution-level NSS extension prevalence data. Sigh.
Transition and review
The core critique of disclosure regimes – that they prioritise staff honesty over student protection and create implicit permission for advances – remains pretty much unaddressed by the sector. Most universities retain register-based systems that focus on “managing conflicts of interest” once relationships exist, rather than preventing the harm that may occur from approaches themselves.
Policies typically frame concerns in managerial language around “professional integrity,” “institutional reputation,” and “fairness in assessment.” Staff-centric discourse contrasts sharply with student-centric concerns about discomfort, vulnerability, and psychological harm. The regulatory emphasis on conflict management appears to miss the fundamental critique that the proposition itself, regardless of outcome, can damage students’ academic confidence and sense of safety.
While many policies acknowledge “power imbalances,” they operationalise the idea narrowly through formal supervisory relationships. Few grapple with the diffuse cultural authority that academic staff wield as gatekeepers to disciplinary knowledge, professional networks, and career opportunities. It suggests that universities don’t know how power operates in their own environments, particularly for students from underrepresented backgrounds who may be more dependent on staff endorsement and support.
The evidence that women, Black, Asian, and LGBTQ+ students are disproportionately uncomfortable with boundary-crossing receives pretty much no acknowledgement in institutional policies. The absence of intersectional analysis by definition means that universal policies may systematically under-protect the most vulnerable student populations, despite E6’s emphasis on safeguarding.
Technology and boundaries
Both academic research and common sense tells us that contemporary academic relationships increasingly develop through digital channels that traditional policies struggle to address. Social media connections, informal messaging platforms, and online collaboration tools blur the boundaries between professional and personal communication in ways that very few of the policies I’ve seen acknowledge explicitly.
More broadly, the policies on offer are poorly equipped to address subtle forms of grooming and boundary erosion. Most frameworks deal with binary outcomes – either declared relationships to be managed, or clear breaches to be disciplined – but offer little on the grey areas where inappropriate behaviour develops incrementally through seemingly innocent interactions.
The research evidence on grooming pathways – special attention, informal meetings, personal communications, boundary-testing compliments – finds limited reflection in the material. Where policies do address professional boundaries, they typically focus on practical arrangements (meeting locations, communication channels) rather than the relational dynamics that create vulnerability to exploitation.
It’s a gap that is particularly significant given evidence that students often recognise exploitation only retrospectively, after the power dynamic becomes clear. Policies designed around consent at the time of relationship formation do nothing to address the temporal aspects of harm recognition.
Reporting barriers and trust
Despite E6’s emphasis on accessible reporting, most universities have not fundamentally addressed the structural barriers that deter students from raising concerns. Few policies guarantee independent reporting channels or provide concrete protections against retaliation beyond general misconduct language. The asymmetry of consequences – where students risk academic and career damage whilst staff face at most employment consequences – receives little institutional acknowledgement.
This trust deficit is compounded by the limited evidence of truly independent support systems, particularly at smaller and specialist institutions. Students in performing arts, agriculture, PGRs in general – all are characterised by intense staff-student interaction often face the thinnest protection frameworks despite arguably facing the highest risks of boundary-crossing.
And miserably inevitably, to read the policies you’d think that staff in professional placement settings, years abroad, sports coaching, franchised provision and students’ unions don’t exist. Either those developing the policies have a limited understanding of the contemporary student experience, or have thought about the complexities and placed them in the “too difficult” pile for now. Or maybe it’s that the bulk of policies read like HR policies and have been developed with the university’s own employed staff in mind.
There’s no doubt that the regulatory intervention has successfully prompted some policy development across the sector, but on the evidence I’ve seen so far, the translation from policy text to cultural change remains incomplete.
Whether E6 delivers meaningful protection for students will depend on how universities implement the frameworks in practice, whether they address the underlying trust, power, and vulnerability dynamics that create risks, and how effectively they navigate the complex economic and cultural pressures that shape contemporary academic life.
They’ll also depend on universities proving the regulator wrong by actively deciding to do the right thing, rather than deciding that the bare minimum derived from the checklist will do.
As the vice president of academic affairs and a member of the admissions committee at SSP International (SSPI), a nonprofit organization offering immersive scientific experiences, I review hundreds of applications each year from rising seniors for our flagship program, Summer Science Program. What we’ve learned is that many of our bright and talented students are navigating their academic careers without access to the same supports as similarly high-achieving students.
Where other Summer Science Program applicants might benefit from private tutors, college consultants, or guidance from parents familiar with the college application process and the high stress of today’s competitive college market, these students rise to the top of the applicant pool without leaning on the same resources as their peers.
This is especially true for first-generation students who will be the first in their families to graduate from high school, go through the college admissions process, apply for financial aid, and enroll in college. Not only do they need to be more resourceful and self-reliant without the support of their personal networks, but they also often take on the responsibility of guiding their parents through these processes, rather than the other way around.
School counselor shortage
For many students who are underrepresented in academia, their exposure to different colleges, careers, and networks comes from their school counselors. While the American School Counselor Association (ASCA) recommends a minimum student-to-school counselor ratio of 250:1, the nationwide shortage of counselors led to a national average ratio of 385:1 between 2020-2023. That is a lot of strain on counselors who already serve as jacks of all trades–needing to keep up with evolving college admissions processes, understand the financial circumstances of hundreds of families, provide emotional support, and stay on top of the job market to advise accordingly. This ultimately affects the level of personalized counseling students receive.
Making the college admissions process accessible
In 2020, SSPI launched College Link, a mentorship program offering Summer Science Program alumni access to one-on-one or group mentoring. Mentors support students during their transition from high school to college through guidance on financial aid, early decision/early action processes, college applications, personal essay writing, resume workshopping, and more. To date, College Link has served over 650 mentees and recruited over 580 mentors sourced from SSPI’s 4,200 alumni network.
This mentorship network comprises individuals from various backgrounds, leading successful and diverse careers in academia and STEM. Mentors like Dr. Emma Louden, an astrophysicist, strategist, and youth advocate who also helped develop the program, provided SSPI’s recent alumni with insights from their real-world professional experiences. This helps them explore a variety of careers within the STEM field beyond what they learn about in the classroom.
Demographic data from last year’s Summer Science Program cohort showed that 37 percent of participants had parents with no higher education degree. That is why College Link prioritizes one-on-one mentoring for first-generation college alumni who need more personalized guidance when navigating the complexities of the college application and admission process.
College Link also offers group mentoring for non-first-generation students, who receive the same services from several mentors bringing great expertise on the varying topics highlighted from week to week.
With the support of College Link, nearly one hundred percent of Summer Science Program alumni have gone on to attend college, including MIT, Stanford, Harvard, Caltech and other prestigious institutions.
Using College Link as a blueprint
As the U.S. continues to face a counselor shortage, schools can further support students, especially first-generation students, through the college admissions process by creating mentorship networks using the College Link model. Schools can tap into their alumni network and identify successful role models who are ready to mentor younger generations and guide them beyond the admissions process. With the widespread implementation of Zoom in our everyday lives, it is now easier than ever to build networks virtually.
Mentorship networks in schools can provide additional support systems for high school students and alleviate the pressures school counselors experience daily during college admissions season. Let’s continue to ensure the college admissions process is accessible to all students.
Dr. Mike Manzella, SSP International
Dr. Mike Manzella is the VP of Academic Affairs at SSP International, where he oversees all academic aspects of SSPI’s new and existing STEM research programs and SSPI’s Summer Science Program faculty recruiting efforts. Mike holds a B.S. in Biotechnology from the Rochester Institute of Technology and a PhD in Microbiology and Molecular Genetics from Michigan State University.
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When I read university strategies, there tend to be three themes – teaching, research, and that stuff that underpins it.
If I’m glancing through students’ union strategies, there’s almost always a version of voice, activities/opportunities, and that stuff that underpins it.
And so it is also the case that when we think about higher education regulation in England, everything from the TEF to the Regulatory Framework tends to have a triangle too – there’s experience, outcomes and that other stuff.
The problem is that the case of disabled students presents a bit of a problem for the design of the regulation.
Whatever the current design or theory of change being deployed, the basic question that OfS asks providers to ask is – are disabled students’ outcomes worse than everyone else’s?
The underpinning theory is that if they are, that’s bound to be because their experience is worse. And if the experience was so poor as to be unlawful, that would definitely show up in outcomes.
But what if, despite the experience being considerably (and often unlawfully) worse, the outcomes are broadly comparable – or even better? Where does that leave regulation that tends to start with outcomes and work backwards, rather than start with experience and then feed forwards?
A new brief
The Office for Students (OfS) has published new research that seems to show that disabled students are increasingly dissatisfied with their university experience even as their degree outcomes improve.
The regulator has released two documents – a new insight brief examining equality of opportunity for disabled students, and commissioned research from Savanta exploring how 150 students experienced applying for reasonable adjustments.
The publications come via work from the OfS Disability in Higher Education Advisory Panel, which was established in April 2024 to improve disabled students’ experiences and provide expert guidance.
The latest data reveals an interesting pattern. For full-time undergraduates with reported disabilities, continuation rates are now 1.1 percentage points higher than for non-disabled peers – and attainment rates are 2.0 percentage points higher. That’s a significant shift from 2019 when disabled students lagged behind on both measures.
It’s worth saying that, albeit on a smaller N, part-time undergraduates and degree apprentices tell a different story. Part-time disabled students have completion rates 13.0 percentage points lower than their non-disabled peers whilst degree apprentices show a 5.0 percentage point gap in attainment. These gaps suggest that not all disabled students are benefiting equally from institutional support.
But back on full-time students, when it comes to experience, National Student Survey (NSS) results paint a very different picture. Disabled students consistently report lower satisfaction across all seven themes measured by the survey, and the gaps have grown over the past two years.
The difference in satisfaction with organisation and management has widened from 6.5 percentage points in 2023 to 7.5 percentage points in 2025. Assessment and feedback satisfaction gaps have grown from 2.5 to 3.7 percentage points over the same period.
Complaints to the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIA) tell a similar story. Disabled students now represent over 40 per cent of OIA complaints, up from around one-third in 2023. More significantly, a higher proportion of disabled students’ complaints are being upheld, suggesting some universities are failing to meet their legal obligations.
Six years on
The insight brief isn’t OfS’ first disabled students insight rodeo. 2019’s Insight brief asked whether universities were doing enough for disabled students. It contained a prescient observation:
“Many disabled students are achieving despite the barriers which remain in their way, not because these barriers have been entirely removed.
Over time, the disabled student population has grown substantially. In 2017, 13.2 per cent of students reported a disability. By 2023-24, this had risen to 19.9 per cent of full-time undergraduates and 24.6 per cent of part-time undergraduates. Mental health conditions have driven much of this increase, growing from 0.6 per cent of all students in 2010 to representing a significant proportion of disabled students today.
2019 focused heavily on the social model of disability and questioned whether universities had truly embedded inclusive practices into their institutional structures. It noted that whilst many providers claimed to follow the social model, in practice they still treated disabled students as problems to be solved rather than addressing environmental barriers.
2025’s brief takes a more pragmatic approach. Rather than debating models of disability, it provides a checklist of specific actions universities should take on experience that draws on the new evidence sources – including workshops with 105 university representatives and the Savanta research to understand both student experiences and institutional challenges.
You could call it a statement of expectations, although OfS doesn’t quite go that far.
The Savanta research found that 43 per cent of disabled students had applications for reasonable adjustments fully or partially rejected. Of those students whose needs were not fully met, 91 per cent took further action such as seeking advice or lodging complaints. This level of self-advocacy suggests that students are fighting for support rather than receiving it as a matter of course.
The research also revealed significant differences between mature and younger students. Mature students were much more likely to take proactive steps when their support was inadequate, with 53 per cent following up or escalating concerns compared with 31 per cent of younger students. Success appears to depend partly on students’ ability to work the system rather than the system working for students.
Implementation delays are another indicator that students are succeeding despite rather than because of support arrangements. Over half of students who received positive application outcomes waited five weeks or longer for support to be implemented. Students with three or more health conditions faced even longer waits, with 73 per cent waiting five weeks or more for exam adjustments compared with 45 per cent of students with fewer conditions.
Workshops with university representatives showed that only 15.2 per cent of institutions have established processes for systematically evaluating whether reasonable adjustments are effective. That suggests most universities are not learning from experience or improving their support based on evidence of what works. Students are therefore navigating systems that are not designed to continuously improve.
And the National Student Survey data on organisation and management is particularly telling. This theme, which includes questions about whether the course is well organised and running smoothly and whether the timetable works efficiently, shows the largest gap between disabled and non-disabled students at 7.5 percentage points. If disabled students are achieving good academic outcomes whilst rating organisational aspects poorly, they must be compensating for institutional failings through extra effort.
Disabled Students UK’s 2024 research reinforces this picture. It found that only 38 per cent of disabled students who declared their disability reported having the support they need to access studies on equal terms with non-disabled peers. It also noted that most disabled students hold back from raising access issues with their university, suggesting they are managing barriers independently rather than relying on institutional support.
And the OIA’s annual reports note that disabled students are overrepresented in complaints and that events occurring because a student is disabled are likely to have significant and lasting impacts. The 2024 report specifically highlighted complaints about implementation of support and reasonable adjustments to teaching and assessment. If support systems were working effectively, disabled students wouldn’t need to resort to formal complaints at such high rates.
The brief reminds readers that the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register now explicitly identifies being disabled as a characteristic indicating risk to student success, and reminds that Access and Participation Plans must address gaps in disabled students’ outcomes with specific targets – and that OfS then monitors progress against these commitments.
But there’s a problem. Providers would have to pick those risks, and pick disabled students.
We (don’t) have a plan
If we look across 99 now published Access and Participation Plans for universities, 27 providers have no disability targets whatsoever across any stage of the student lifecycle including widening access.
Then if we isolate targets related to experience (ie we ignore access), thirty-five providers have set no targets for disabled students in the continuation, completion, attainment or progression stages. This means over one-third of institutions have no measurable goals for improving outcomes once disabled students arrive on campus.
Most that do have a target don’t have them in all three of the experience measures. And even those that have targets often have them for a subset of disabled students where the disability type suggests a gap.
If we assume that providers have been reasonable in not selecting disabled students and/or the risks in the EORR associated with disabled students, it’s a design problem. For a start, when an issue is spread thinly across providers and you have a provider-based regulatory system, you don’t get detailed plans in large parts of the long tail – and so the actions are absent.
But that’s not the only problem. If we then turn to what providers say they do or are promising to do and look at the aspects of OfS’ checklist that directly relate to student experience, just 39 discuss a process for students to raise issues if support isn’t meeting needs or isn’t implemented properly, and none of the others (working with and listening to disabled students, communication about reasonable adjustments, sharing information about adjustments across the institution and ensuring teaching and assessments are accessible for disabled students while maintaining rigour) go above 60.
Even then, we tend to see descriptions of existing activity and service provision rather than a new and properly resourced intervention. After all, who’s going to put in their plan that new for this cycle is that provider complying with the law?
Imagine if the design worked the other way. OfS – as it did with Harassment and Sexual Misconduct (first with a Statement of Expectations, then through a formal Regulatory Condition) – sets out expectations. Then through polling (or ideally, an NSS extension, again a la H&SM) determines whether students are experiencing those expectations. Then it can take both system-wide and provider-level action.
That – as is also the case with Harassment and Sexual Misconduct – might all lead to better outcomes, it might not. But those design flaws mean that for plans to be made and action to be monitored to secure students’ basic legal rights over their HE, there have to be a decent number of disabled students at their provider, and they have to be failing. If not, no promised action.
Checklists and ticked boxes
Overall, we’re left with a checklist – one that represents a pragmatic attempt to provide universities with clear guidance about what they should be doing to support disabled students. The questions about personalisation, implementation, communication, information-sharing, complaints processes, evaluation and accessible assessment all address real problems identified in the research.
But that checklist’s weaknesses reflect a broader challenge in OfS regulation of experience. The questions are framed as prompts for institutional reflection rather than as requirements with clear standards. That approach may encourage tonal buy-in from universities, but it risks allowing institutions to tick boxes without making meaningful changes. And that’s if they even download the PDF.
The checklist doesn’t specify what good looks like in any of the areas. It doesn’t set expectations about response times, explain what effective information-sharing systems should include, or define what routine evaluation means in practice. The lack of specificity makes it difficult for institutions to know whether they are meeting expectations, or for OfS to hold them accountable.
Nor does the checklist address the resource constraints that universities identified as barriers to supporting disabled students effectively. The workshops noted that more students are reporting disabilities, that many have complex support needs and that institutions face staff shortages and stretched budgets.
Unlike on H&SM – where OfS says “afford this detail or don’t provide HE” – the checklist acknowledges none of the challenges nor provides guidance about how universities should prioritise support when resources are limited.
As usual on disability, no teeth are being bared here – a list of questions to muse on, rather than requirements to meet, and no consequences for those that fail.
To be fair, the brief notes that students can make internal complaints, complain to the OIA or take their university to court. But as OfS CEO Susan Lapworth herself said about students in general – let alone disabled students – back in 2019:
We should… consider whether a model that relies primarily on individual students challenging a provider for a breach of contract places a burden on students in an undesirable way.
As I say, the checklist is a useful starting point for institutional self-reflection. But without clearer standards, stronger accountability mechanisms and recognition of the resource challenges universities face, it is unlikely to transform disabled students’ experiences, and is more likely to be just another PDF whose link I look up in a few years time in another article like this.
And crucially, the evidence suggests that plenty of disabled students will continue to succeed despite, rather than because, laws that are supposed to achieve equality.
Student voice is not a survey or metric but rather fostering a culture of participation on campus
Erin MorleyOctober 15, 2025Last Updated: October 15, 2025
0 2 minutes read
Students participating in management decisions starts in the classroom and should be supported right through to governing bodies, a student experience expert has said.
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When I walked into my first classroom almost a decade ago, I had no idea how many “first days” I would experience–and how each one would teach me something new.
Growing up–first in the Virgin Islands and then later in Florida–I always felt pulled toward teaching. Tutoring was my introduction, and I realized early that I was a helper by nature. Still, my path into the classroom wasn’t straightforward–I changed majors in college, tried different things, and it wasn’t until six months after graduation that a friend pointed me toward Teach For America. That leap took me all the way to Baton Rouge, Louisiana, far from home and family, but I was fortunate to find a strong cohort of fellow teachers and mentors who grounded me.
Those early years weren’t easy. Being away from home, balancing the demands of teaching, and later, raising two kids of my own–it could feel overwhelming. My mentors kept me steady, reminding me that teaching is about community and connection. That lesson has never left me.
As I started this school year–my eighth first day of school at the front of the classroom–I’m reflecting on other lessons learned that help me help my students thrive.
Connection is the key to everything. If students know you believe in them, they’ll start believing in themselves. I think of one student in particular who was failing in my class repeatedly, and finally passed–not because I’m a miracle worker, but because we built trust. I bought into him, and eventually, he bought into himself. Those are the moments that make the long days and sacrifices worth it.
Make your classroom a safe space to learn. I teach 10th-grade biology and 11th-grade dual-enrollment engineering; these are subjects that can seem intimidating to young people. I tell my students that I want to hear each and every one of their ideas. No one’s brains are alike. My brain isn’t like yours, and yours isn’t like your neighbor’s. Listening to everyone’s thoughts, processes, and ideas helps us expand our own thinking and understanding. Especially with a subject matter like science, I want students to know that there is no shame in exploring different ideas together. In fact, that’s what makes this kind of work exciting.
Lean on your network. We preach the importance of continuous learning to our students, and rightfully so. There is always room to grow in every subject. I believe teachers need to model this for our students. I lean heavily on my support system: my mentors, my master teacher, and other educators and coaches. They are always there to bounce ideas off of, helping me continue to strengthen my lessons and outcomes. This also builds community; two of my mentors, Sabreen Thorne and Marie Mullen, are Teach For America Greater Baton Rouge alumnae who still work for the organization and still make the effort to keep in touch, invite me to community events, and offer me words of wisdom.
I’m proud that these approaches have been working. This past year, our school, Plaquemine High School, saw the most improved test scores in the Iberville Parish School District. It wasn’t magic–it was the collective effort of teachers and students who decided we could do better, together. I was also honored to receive the Shell Science Lab Regional Makeover grant, which provides us with resources to upgrade our science lab. We’ll be able to provide the equipment our students deserve. Science classrooms should be safe spaces where every idea matters, where students feel empowered to experiment, question, and create. This grant will help us bring that vision to life.
Eight years in, I’ve learned that teaching isn’t about perfection. It’s about showing up, reflecting, leaning on others, and never losing sight of why we’re here: to open doors for kids. Every year, every day, is another chance to do just that.
Gelisa Patin, Plaquemine High School
Gelisa Patin is a biology and dual-enrollment engineering teacher at Plaquemine High School in Louisiana and a Teach For America 2018 Greater Baton Rouge alum.
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