This HEPI blog was kindly authored by Joe McGinn, CEO at CoachBright and Julian True, Access and Participation Manager at the University of Plymouth.
UK higher education, despite all its current challenges, is a national success story we should be proud of. In the 2023-2024 QS World University Rankings, the UK had 17 universities in the top 100, behind only the US (with over 30).
This success is even more impressive when you consider the staggering strides the sector has taken in increasing access to those historically underrepresented in higher education. There are many stats one could use to evidence this, but perhaps the most compelling comes from the most recent Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA) data. In the 2022-23 academic year, the latest data available, more undergraduates (23.6% of the cohort) came from a postcode within quintile 1 (the most deprived) of the Indices of Multiple Deprivation (IMD Q1), than either IMD Q2, 3, 4, or 5.
In lay terms, this means that more students are now coming from the poorest postcode areas than any others. Indeed, this has been the story since 2019-20, but the gap now appears to be growing at a remarkable rate.
It’s likely this figure is being inflated by mature students to some degree (as mature students are more likely to come from IMD Q1 than young students) but, notwithstanding, this is a success the sector should be proud of.
“The sector is getting underrepresented young people in the door, but isn’t doing enough to ensure they achieve and flourish when they get there.”
However, of course, ‘access’ to university is only one piece of the puzzle. If we follow this through the other four stages of the student ‘lifecycle’ we see a different story. The data also shows that students coming from IMD Q1 are the least likely to continue into the second year, complete their degree, attain a 2:1 or higher, or progress into managerial or professional employment, further study, or another positive outcome after graduating.
With some of these stages, the contrasts are stark. Roughly one in five students from the poorest postcodes will drop out in their first year, and of those who do complete their degree, only 66% will attain a 2:1 or higher. By contrast, only one in ten students from wealthy postcodes drop out in their first year, and a staggering 86.3% attain a 2:1 or higher.
To put it plainly, the sector is doing a good job at getting underrepresented young people in the door, but isn’t doing enough to ensure they achieve and flourish when they get there.
This is something we have been acutely aware of at the University of Plymouth for some time and one of our current and continuing Access and Participation Plan (APP) objectives is to reduce the attainment gap between students from IMD Q1 and IMD Q5. In looking for innovative ways to impact this, and also the continuation rate from the first into the second year of study for these students, we have partnered with social mobility charity CoachBright. CoachBright provides bespoke, 1:1 coaching, and working with them we have developed a programme that includes individual coaching alongside a series of group workshops, for our Black, Asian and Minority Ethnic (BAME) first-year undergraduates from IMD Q1.
The programme has the overarching aim of reducing continuation, attainment and completion gaps. We believe the coaching will do this by focussing on a set of specific aims: developing students’ sense of belonging and connection to the university, ensuring they feel well supported, developing their metacognitive abilities and other skills that support learning, and increasing their own expectations of what they can achieve whilst at university and beyond.
We first piloted the programme in the 2022-23 academic year, repeating it with a larger cohort in 2023-24 and we will be scaling up for 2024-25. We have learned from both the process and impact evaluation, making changes in response to our students’ feedback and the evaluation outcomes. Although our first two cohorts were both relatively small, the impact has been very encouraging. While we don’t have the longitudinal data yet, our evaluation found the coaching programme had a notable impact on the students’ confidence, their belief in themselves and their capacity to succeed, their ability to adjust to life at university, and their sense of connectedness and belonging to the university community. These positive medium-term outcomes were consistent across both years.
With more students from underrepresented groups accessing higher education than ever before, it is crucial that we build on, and don’t waste, this progress by designing and delivering programmes that enable them to flourish and realise their potential once they are here.
Reflections from participants:
‘I think the programme made my first year of uni feel much less intimidating, reminding me that I do have friends, resources, opportunities available to me to help with my growth and taking that small amount of time to reflect on it definitely eased a lot of my anxieties and worries about uni.‘
‘The coaching has been great for my mental health, helping me manage stress and workload.‘
‘I have overcome obstacles such as finding new friends, mental health issues, and difficulties with my studies. I have also had the chance to reflect on my progress from when I started this programme to the present day.’
To many of us, “People of Colour” we find the acronym BAME (Black Asian Ethnic Minority) derogatory. It is time to find another acronym and we should debate what that acceptable acronym might be. HEPI could take the lead on this. I wholly support widening participation and social mobility and believe that every young person or disadvantaged individual should be given an equal chance of succeeding in life. But identifying someone as BAME does feel like an unacceptable label or stigma one is lumbered with.
Thank you for your comment Elizabeth and I agree with your sentiments. I became aware of BAME Over a couple of years ago, and from this, and conversations with our own students here at the University of Plymouth, we have stopped using the term BAME. If you look at our latest APP, you will see that we use the term ethnically diverse. Unfortunately, the OfS still uses the term BAME, and while I think HEPI could certainly help lead, it really requires the OfS, DfE and government to really lead the way and use a different term, or the individual terms such as African Diaspora people, South East Asian diaspora people.
Thank you for your comment, Elizabeth. I echo Julian’s thoughts. It would also be very useful, for my own understanding, to get a sense of what it is about the BAME acronym that you find derogatory, particularly as you suggest we should look for an alternative acronym?
From my understanding and conversations, it’s the desire to find an acronym/shorthand in the first place for people from a minority ethnic background that has often been challenged, as it groups together many different experiences. From my view, I don’t see how we can find an alternative acronym that avoids this, but would definitely be interested in your thoughts.
There is of course always a challenge in language and literature where the desire to be concise and ‘readable’ comes into conflict with providing the sufficient level of detail to do justice to the full context. I would be really interested in your thoughts for how a short blog like this could better do that.