'The area where, above all, the OfS wants to see the most rapid and radical improvement is in securing greater equity in the access and participation of students. We have seen in this year’s access and participation plans a welcome shift in ambition and commitment. But this laudable commitment will need to translate quickly into results. The challenge now is to change the facts on the ground.” Sir Michael Barber, Chair of the Office for Students
In December the OfS released its first annual review setting out the current state of English higher education and reflecting on its progress in implementing a new regulatory approach. We have reflected on the key points raised in the review and considered what they mean for our partners.
The registration process
The report recognised that the registration process took longer than expected, citing missing or weak evidence and identifying weaknesses in how applications were presented and explained as causes of the delays. The majority of interventions imposed by the OfS relate to Condition One, on Access and Participation Plans (APPs). The OfS have published additional guidance on how they will monitor providers, explaining in greater detail the processes and expectations.
Advice to our members
As well as being familiar with the new monitoring guidance, providers should pay particular attention to their Registration letters, which may include further notes on OfS considerations in relation to their submitted APPs. These notes provide an indication on where OfS will more likely check and monitor into the future, and there may be additional explicit requirements / areas of interest cited.
Providers should also reflect on any queries that they were asked to address during the APP assessment process, as these are also likely areas to which OfS will pay attention in ongoing monitoring.
The SEER service will support members to understand what these expectations are likely to mean, and will help its members best respond to the ongoing monitoring requirements.
Fair access and participation
As we are aware there are still significant gaps in equality of opportunity for some groups in relation to accessing and succeeding in higher education. The review highlighted the important role that raising school attainment plays in starting to address these issues. There is an expectation that providers show continuous improvement in both practice and outcomes.
“We are still a long way from equality of opportunity in higher education, but we have a great opportunity to make a real difference that will deliver immeasurable dividends not just to students but also to universities and colleges, and beyond them to communities and society.”
There will be a focus on mature learners, and the need to address the significant decline in participation. The review suggests the OfS may launch a challenge competition later this year aimed at supporting and encouraging greater diversity of provision, including flexible and part-time learning. This will run alongside a focus on disability, ethnicity and socioeconomic background and a continued focus on the BAME attainment gap.
As part of APPs the OfS require a systematic analysis of characteristics of your student body, and an honest and rigorous self-assessment backed up by national data. The OfS want to see effective, evidence-based interventions with proven outcomes.
The OfS will be updating the A&P data dashboard to improve transparency for non-technical users. Hopefully this will make it more accessible. As part of this upgrade, a new experimental measure, ‘Associations between characteristics’, will be introduced, which combines data on different student characteristics.
The establishment of TASO will also support the sector to access information on effective practice.
Advice to our members
Raising attainment in schools
While not all providers have explicit targets relating to raising attainment in schools, this is clearly an ongoing area of focus for the OfS. In conducting more general outreach work, members should therefore explore how they can contribute to and evidence the ‘raising attainment’ ambition in the future. We predict that this will be a question for all providers in future years – so early preparation is recommended.
Here are a some efficient ways to take some initial steps:
Explore attainment raising as part of your general school engagement and partnership work, using the expertise of engaged teachers and principals to inform how best to contribute to the schools’ own attainment (teaching, learning and curriculum) agenda. Determine how you can add value to existing school priorities rather than invent your own practice. Understand what evidence/ outcomes and evaluation the school has in place; align your practice to this.
Explore other organisations and projects with third parties/ partners which have a focus on raising attainment, and seek to leverage existing activity and outcomes through contributing to existing, or creating collaborative, provision.
Use best practice case studies and examples upon which you can model your projects. Many providers have been undertaking projects to raise attainment over the last 5 years and there are focused examples for different subject areas as well as provision type (e.g. master classes to homework hubs to academic mentoring). Make sure you explore these examples and learn from them in developing your approach.
There are a great array of free resources online provided by various bodies, organisations and employers that support school learning based on subject/ career area. Explore what is available beyond the sector – and consider these for partnership work too, where you consider your missions are aligned.
Keep it as simple as possible and understand that you are very unlikely to prove causality – only correlation. Therefore qualitative case studies and testimonials are an important part of the evaluation and evidence required.
The SEER service is part of a suite of “Collaborative HE” activity, through which collaborative outreach has been developed in 2019-20. The first collaborative outreach programme, “FutureFIT”, is embedded in school curriculum and aligned to pupil outcomes across attainment, progression and destinations (careers and education information, advice and guidance). This project is set to grow nationally, incorporating target schools and multi academy trusts in areas of disadvantage across the country. You can ask the SEER team for further information on collaboration into this project, which is launching with a committed 25 initial schools from 2020-21.
Mature learners
The OfS has signalled in a number of places their increased focus on addressing the decline in mature learners. With some of our members attracting high volumes of mature learners, this is an area where members have an opportunity to share good practice and showcase some of the innovative approaches taken to delivering higher education.
For those members with high proportions of mature learners, you might want to consider capturing why your model of provision appeals to mature learners, and what factors were taken into consideration when designing it. Working with your mature students to capture this will give it more authenticity.
For those members that have seen a decline in mature learners enrolling in courses, you may want to consider why, and what steps could be taken to support access for mature learners. This could be related to practical aspects like timetabling, or lack of flexibility in how provision is delivered. Speak to your students to find out what the barriers could be.
We also know that mature learners can be a difficult cohort of students to reach, so if members have had success in engaging mature learners in outreach activities, you should look to capture this information too.
SEER will be looking to collate such information from members so we can produce a coherent picture across our members and share good practice across the sector.
With the suggestion of a challenge competition in this area later in this year, engaging with this topic now may put members in a good position to respond to the competition when it is launched. The SEER team will keep members up to date with developments in this area, and will help to facilitate members to explore the potential for a collaborative bid in the challenge competition, and can support with bid writing.
Improvements and ongoing focus on data, evidence and evaluation
The updated dashboard and underlying data/ methodology will continue to be the source of ‘truth’ for the OfS. Providers dealing with internal data, for example where datasets are too small to report on the dashboard, should as far as possible seek to align their own data analyses with OfS methodology. A consistent approach from the outset will best allow for alignment in the future and minimise administrative burden.
As part of our work in SEER we will remain cognisant as to how we can most effectively use this database and integrate additional member data. SEER is providing and supporting its members with analyses of characteristics of their student bodies, and self-assessment. SEER will bring national data to these analyses to evidence and compare performance and contexts.
In relation to evaluation, the initial suite of evaluation tools provided by SEER will be released to members within the next few months. These will allow members to build evidence-based interventions and demonstrate commitment to evaluation and impact.
As part of the collective voice to the sector and contributions to TASO, members should be ready to work with the SEER team to provide a range of rigorous case studies and qualitative evidence to support and add value to quantitative data, and to fill the ‘gaps’ left by quantitative analyses – particularly where datasets are small. This will be an important aspect of contributing to the TASO and sector evidence base on ‘what works’ in the micro, small and specialist HE provider context.
Admission
This year the OfS will be conducting a review of provider admissions, including the merits of post-qualification applications. This will consider the important role that contextual admissions can play in widening participation. It is widely understood that the use of contextual admissions has increased across the sector, and there are some innovative and radical examples of its use.
There is a challenge here for many providers not having access to appropriate data at the time of admissions to be able to make contextual offers. OfS are exploring how to make more data available including working with UCAS to make free school meals data available.
Advice to our members
Members should keep updated with the admissions review as it is released. The SEER team will provide notifications.
More broadly, members should reflect on their own admissions processes, including the types of data collected that would inform contextual admissions processes. Conversely, consideration of gaps in data would point to areas for improvement more broadly, regardless of whether you have a contextual admissions policy in place.
Given OfS’s emphasis on contextual admissions as a driver for positive change in fair access, it is worth considering this approach if you do not already have contextual admissions in place. A range of best practice is available across the sector, including on the OfS website in the A-Z of effective practice section.
Having said this, we find that most micro, small and specialist providers are much more adept at contextualising and individualising admissions processes. Admissions methodology, which is more likely to involve individual interviews or auditions, lends itself to contextual practices; while the smaller intake size allows for more personalised admissions via academics and flexibility /responsiveness of administrative processes. Therefore it is worth considering whether you have best or innovative practices that could be shared. The SEER team will support members in this process, building the collective voice as well as individual provider examples.
Value for money
Students’ views on what value for money means can differ significantly to the views of providers. For some it’s about outcomes, others it’s about the types of academics they have the opportunity to work with. In research commissioned by OfS, it was clear that quality of teaching, contact time and feedback was broadly considered important by students. The OfS are pushing providers to be more transparent about value for money for their students, and they will be looking at how they can strengthen their guidance in this area.
The importance of meaningful student engagement will continue to be a focus, the OfS will be publishing their student engagement strategy in the spring. Providers are expected to involve students in the development of their plans, and the OfS are ensuring that student engagement is part of the monitoring process.
Advice to our members
We would encourage our members to actively and iteratively consider whether they fully understand what ‘value for money’ means to their students, and how they build value. How these considerations translate into increasing the effectiveness of recruitment activity (including outreach, with particular consideration and nuances for APP target groups) is also a critical reflection point. There are a range of views across the sector regarding “value for money” and members should consider these in the context of their offer to students (academic, personal and professional). Understanding and documenting value that is added due to the particular status of your institution (i.e. specialist; campus-based; professionally linked or accredited, etc.) would be a good exercise.
Using the ‘student engagement’ focus, members may wish to include students in some ideation or workshop sessions to explore and discuss concepts of “value for money”, along side other topics relevant to access and participation.
The SEER team will help members to leverage their student body and collaborate with them in relation to the SEER objectives and in particular evaluation of APP activity. Involving students in the development of data baselines and strategy; and, analyses and interpretation of data, would add value and contribute to the “students as co-creators” approach (rather than just providing feedback). Members can expect to work with the SEER team to explore and set up such processes to involve students in the implementation and monitoring of their APPs.