Risk 6: Insufficient academic support
Students may not receive sufficient personalised academic support to achieve a positive outcome.
Explanation
Whatever the grades that a student has when they enter higher education, different students may require different levels of academic support.
This may be due to:
- their individual circumstances, such as personal health issues, special educational needs (SEN) diagnosis or home difficulties that impact on a student’s ability to engage to the fullest extent with their academic studies
- differences in educational experiences before university that did not equip them with the same level of relevant skills or knowledge as other students.
Experiencing this risk is likely to impact a student on-course and at the progression stages of their education.
- If a student does not receive the necessary personalised academic support, they may achieve a lower degree attainment than they could have achieved, or they may withdraw from a course.
- Students may also experience poor mental health.
- Students may have less time to devote to non-academic activities than other students.
- These may subsequently further impact on progression rates through to graduate study or to employment.
Students who are:
- prisoners
- from a low household income
- first in family
- disabled
- reporting a mental health condition
- mature
- black students
- Asian
- mixed ethnicity
- other ethnicity
- from Gypsy, Traveller or Roma ethnic groups, or the Boater and Showmen communities
- commuters
- young carers
- from a socio-economic background of 'never worked' or 'long term unemployed'
- from a socio-economic background of 'small employers and own account workers'
- from a socio-economic background of 'routine occupations' or 'semi-routine occupations'
- estranged
- care experienced
- children in need
- parents.
Note that the ordering does not denote a scale or ranking system.
Intersectionality:
It is important to consider how different student characteristics might interact with each other, and with school and areas-based characteristics. Providers may also wish to consider whether the mode of study heightens a risk.
For example, students from black or Asian groups who have also been eligible for free school meals in the past six years are more likely to be affected by this risk than students from black or Asian groups who have not been eligible for free school meals in the past six years.
It is therefore recommended that providers consider intersectionality closely when looking at their own data.
For different groups of students, the impact of these risks that are visible in data might be:
- low continuation and low completion rates
- low on-course attainment rates
- low on-course attainment rates compared with others who are studying the same course
- low NSS results for questions relating to academic support (such as academic support; learning resources; learning community; mental health, assessment and community)
- internal data on academic student support data (such as showing low uptake of academic support coupled with low attainment and/or low continuation rates)
- lower progression rates to further study
- lower progression rates into employment.
It is important to note that there are also likely to be impacts that are not visible through data.
Although this is a national risk, the extent to which it is seen at each provider may depend on factors such as:
- entrance tariff
- whether the provider recruits nationally or locally
- the extent of academic support provided.
We therefore encourage providers to examine their own data and establish if this risk to equality of opportunity affects their current or potential student population.
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