Setting out his plans for access and participation at a Social
Mobility Foundation event in London, Office for Students (OfS)
director for fair access and participation, John Blake today
announced plans for a new risk register to identify students who
need extra support get the help they need from universities and
colleges.
John Blake said:
‘Universities and colleges can and should make a huge difference
to the life chances of those they educate. We contend there is a
wider mission for higher education—a civic and moral duty to
always seek out new ways to serve our society and better ways to
ensure that those historically excluded from higher education can
benefit from it.
‘We will build a framework that captures the scale of the
sector’s work on equality, and channel it into a coherent,
co-ordinated and compelling alignment that uses the sector’s
limited resources and capacity to greatest effect. We propose a
model where the OfS focuses on a sector-wide discussion where
universities and colleges will undertake serious and sustained
analysis of their own context and mission, and identify the most
serious risks to equality of opportunity they face, and outline
measures to mitigate these. Access and participation plans will
become a public collective record of the gravest challenges
higher education providers are taking on, the interventions they
propose to use to tackle them, and the methods they will utilise
to understand if they have succeeded and how and why that outcome
has occurred.
‘We plan to create an “equality of opportunity risk register”,
which we will expect universities and colleges to have regard to
in creating their plans. We propose to define risks to equality
of opportunity as occurring when an individual, because of
circumstances that the individual did not choose, may have their
choices about the nature and direction of their life reduced by
the actions or inactions of another individual, organisation or
system. This register will help ensure that sector-wide risks are
properly addressed by higher education providers, while also
respecting the autonomy and pluralism of the sector.
‘Evaluation and ongoing learning about efficacy and efficiency is
essential to understanding whether risks to equality of
opportunity have been reduced. We will hold universities and
colleges accountable for undertaking and evaluating the
interventions they have committed to, ensuring that they are
taking action to tackle risks to equality of opportunity, and
helping build our knowledge of what works, and what does not, in
a coherent manner.
‘We believe that our regulation can and will establish greater
clarity and co-ordination of the sector’s work in this area. It
will expand its impact and make possible more and better activity
in partnership with employers, schools and charities, to ensure
that choice, and not chance, determines who accesses and succeeds
in English higher education.’
The OfS plans to consult on a new approach to access and
participation plans next week, which will introduce a stronger
focus on universities, schools and colleges working together to
improve attainment. It will also emphasise the importance of
effective evaluation and of ensuring that students continue their
studies, complete their courses and are successful in getting
good jobs.
The OfS’s consultation on new regulatory expectations for access
and participation will begin in October.
