In the context of increased regulation across the UK Higher Education sector and the evolving priorities of the Office for Students in England, Advance HE can support institutions to identify challenges and realise ambitions in their approach to supporting access, participation and success for all students.
Since the introduction of Access and Participation plans required for institutions who wish to register as an Approved (fee cap) provider, the higher education sector has built on the improvements of recent decades in diversifying the student body overall, particularly in terms of ethnicity and socio-economic background. Eliminating inequality is a priority for institutions, the sector, and Advance HE. Institutions are asked to set stretching and ambitious outcomes-based targets concerning not just access to HE but also student success and progression, focused on the gaps providers identify in their assessment of performance and demonstrating ongoing improvement.
Advance HE can support your institution’s approach in the implementation of your Access and Participation Plans (APP) and includes:
- Writing or renegotiating your plan
- Putting your plan into practice
- Tackling tricky issues
- APP progress review
- Skills development
Want to find out more?
If you would like to know more about our support, complete the form by clicking the button below and we will send you an information sheet as well as links to further useful resources related to APPs.
Our holistic approach
At Advance HE, we bring expertise in responding to legislative, regulatory and cultural drivers around equity and student experience, as well as working with a broad range of providers and disciplines. Our expertise spans the full range of challenges and opportunities posed by implementing Access and Participation Plans, and we are able to bring this expertise together to provide holistic support for your access, participation and success strategy and its implementation.
This diagram reflects how the strands of our work connect to create a successful strategy for access, participation and success.
Why partner with Advance HE?
We are of and for the sector, and work with institutions in a way which is tailored to your context, challenges and culture. We bring your institution:
- practical and research informed expertise: knowledge, research and analysis tackling challenges across the student lifecycle
- a critical friend: guidance, support and challenge as a critical friend and sector expert
- equality, diversity and inclusion (EDI) specialists: extensive EDI expertise as leaders in challenging conversations, legal and policy regulatory requirements including safeguarding, interventions to support protected, marginalised and underrepresented groups
- organisational development and leadership specialists: extensive organisational development, leadership and change expertise including working on holistic strategic change, policy into practice, integrated reporting and challenging strategy
- teaching and learning specialists: extensive expertise supporting all aspects of student success and outcomes including inclusive learning and teaching, supporting staff reflection and development, employability, and access
- holistic working: uniquely positioned to bring students, academics, leaders and professional practitioners together
- cross-sector evidence: sharing sector-wide and international good practice, and our own in-house research.
Our support
We focus on working with you as a critical friend and informed partner to enhance and reflect on your approach to inclusion across the student lifecycle. The OfS’s regulatory approach – centred on long-term targets, an evaluation culture, and a focus on ambitious engagement with evolving priorities to improve outcomes for underrepresented groups presents complex challenges which may need specialist support to tackle. Our tailored offer is based on a thorough understanding of your institutional context informed by your key documents and engagement with stakeholders. Below is an outline of the broad range of support we can offer, combined and tailored to your context.
Writing or renegotiating your plan
Putting together an APP to register as an Approved (fee cap) provider is a complex process to meet the OfS’s requirement that plans be challenging and stretching as well as achievable during the five-year period they are in force. As an ongoing commitment to access and participation in HE, APPs will need to be renegotiated afresh following this period, and in response to evolving OfS priorities. As complex technical documents which require a whole university approach, we can help you interpret the requirements in your context and consider what an initial plan would look like for your institution, or help you continue to set appropriate goals and further enhance your approaches as part of the next cycle.
Our solution
Our offer includes:
- Helping you reflect on appropriate goals and priorities, including reflection on your experiences of implementing any previous APP.
- Supporting you in ensuring that proposed aims and targets rest on a current evidence base and sound Theory of Change
- Identifying key perspectives to inform the plan across your institution and specialist workshops to help develop your plan
- Providing expert consultancy on drawing up underlying action plans, including designing in evaluation.
Putting your plan into practice
There are a number of challenges associated with operationalising APPs to drive forward, sustain and review the necessary measures and change in your institution. These might include understanding the best routes to put your plan into practice, translating aims into outcomes and evaluating impact, knowing what areas to strategically invest in to achieve your goals and how to connect strategies and people across your institution to drive forward change.
Our solution
Our offer includes:
- understanding your context and ambitions through analysis of key documents and interviews with key stakeholders
- providing expert consultancy to support you in building a roadmap for successful implementation
- Identifying best practice and models that work, and adapting these initiatives for your context
- Supporting you in making the required connections across teams and strategies to realise your plan.
We can provide a report comprising a series of recommendations or reflective questions designed for your institution and based upon our knowledge of OfS guidance relating to APPs, sector practice and wider literature as it relates to your context.
Additional support to suit your context
Additional support is available to help you to embed your plan. Part of successfully implementing your plan is to bring together relevant individuals and teams across your organisation, and work with them to realise your ambitions. This would include facilitating co-production or discussion with your students. Our support can include:
- specialist workshops to bring particular groups together to monitor, refine and update your plan or request variations if needed
- on-boarding and upskilling leaders to drive forward change and supporting you to communicate change across your organisation at all levels
- working with you to consider how APP work relates to other institutional change programmes and strategies. For instance, institutions that are also working to change organisational results and outcomes through a combination of initiatives such as Equality Charters and TEF. We can provide support to take a more systemised and holistic approach to change.
Tackling tricky issues
Issues experienced by underrepresented students can be complex, nuanced and intersecting, and initiatives can have unforeseen and unintentional ramifications. We can support institutions where the plan, or the process of operationalising the plan has unearthed a specific challenge: for example, indications that an action is not having the expected impact, and the potential need to request a variation to the APP from the OfS. We can also support you to respond proactively to any issues arising from OfS approval or monitoring of plans.
Our solution
Using our extensive experience both in the regulatory environment and in the areas of organisational development across EDI, leadership and staff development, our support would include (where applicable):
- working with you to identify and unpack the root of the challenge
- providing guidance on good practices
- conducting focus groups
- facilitating challenging conversations
- developing action plans and recommendations designed to support your context.
Supporting challenging conversations
Our experience in helping institutions to discuss and understand complex areas of student inclusion (including issues related to identity characteristics, inclusive curricula and services, intersectionality and working with sensitive data and research) will ensure challenging but necessary conversations take place.
APP progress review
It is important to take stock and review progress and challenges against your plan to ensure your strategy and investments are the right ones.
Our solution
Our expert advisor would:
- review your plan, the activities to date and their impact, and the quality of evaluation
- help you to identify areas of success as well as areas where more work is required to meet your targets and ambitions
- provide a reflective report with recommendations of enhancements to your APP strategy and implementation.
Challenging and supportive evaluation
We bring expertise and knowledge drawn from research, practice and experience to support a wide range of challenges. Our reflective report provides recommendations of interventions proven to work, with a deep understanding of your challenges and context. The report provides clarity on the areas of necessary change to practice to realise your ambitions.
As an organisation independent of the regulator, and with a depth of expertise relating to student inclusion (access, awarding gaps, inclusive learning and teaching) as well as the interventions which realise change in practice (culture, evaluation, impact), Advance HE are well placed to serve as your advisor and critical friend.
Skills development
Skills development
The production, implementation and renegotiation of APPs require specialist expertise including data collection, analysis and evaluation, and specific knowledge relating to inclusion and experience of diverse student groups. This is particularly challenging for institutions who may not have the resource, capacity or expertise in-house.
Our solution
Our skills development offer may include:
- specialist bespoke workshops centred around areas of priority
- research and evaluation support from our team of experts
- interventions building on our sector-wide expertise and knowledge of what works in practice.
Unparalleled technical expertise
Our team includes those with extensive research and evaluation experience in the areas of priority for our sector, EDI and widening participation specialists with unparalleled expertise matched to your needs and a nuanced understanding of what works for a cross-section of our sector. Our staff bring both significant experience of the practical and strategic challenges of the UK higher education sector, as well as an understanding of the wider policy and regulatory landscape. Our team is committed to equity in education, with a focus on evidence, long-term cultural change, and working in partnership with students.
Team core capabilities include:
- subject specialists on issues such as inclusion and success of specific groups (considering ‘race’, disability, gender, and intersectional approaches), including support for tackling ‘gaps’ in access, retention and awards
- staff with significant expertise of supporting learning and teaching development, and working within widening access and participation
- researchers in equity, experience and experts in impact evaluation and analysis of qualitative and quantitative data analysis
- organisational development, leadership and governance specialists experienced at challenging leaders across our sector to develop and implement strategy, drive change and foster an environment inductive of success for all students
- staff with expertise in contextualising access and participation within wider sector contexts including with the TEF, Race Equality Charter, Athena SWAN, international and national recruitment, safeguarding and wellbeing.
We will work with you to ensure that we match your exact needs with the right expertise, knowledge and experience to address your challenges. Advance HE are a not-for-profit organisation. We work for the sector, using our expertise to support higher education institutions through the challenges they face. We believe excellence is achieved by people. Removing the barriers, so all can succeed; driving positive change to make higher education better for all.
Useful resources
There are a range of resources that may be useful in developing your APP and driving forward change in your institution. These include:
- Tackling underrepresentation of ‘protected’ student groups: sector learning
- Using data and evidence
- Student retention and success in higher education
- Framework for student access retention attainment and progression in higher education
- OfS – Addressing Barriers to Student Success programme
- Catalyst for change: Advance HE evaluation of projects to protect students from hate crime, sexual violence and online harassment in higher education published
