Student disability - guide for universities and colleges

We are committed to working with universities, colleges and other organisations to improve disabled students’ experiences of higher education.  

Disability in Higher Education Advisory Panel

We established the Disability in Higher Education Advisory Panel in 2024, following the end of our funding of the Disabled Students’ Commission.

The panel provides expert advice on enhancing disabled students’ experiences in higher education by considering and reviewing how universities and colleges currently support disabled students.​

Drawing on evidence, research and analysis from the sector, the panel also make recommendations to help shape our approach to supporting disabled students. 

Recurrent funding

We distribute government funding to more than 330 providers in England. Providers must be registered with the OfS to receive this funding

Funding is provided to support student access and success for disabled students through the disabled students’ premium. It is intended to support the costs of activities that will promote inclusion and remove barriers to participation and success for disabled students.

Access and participation plans

Access and participation plans are agreements that set out how universities and colleges will support disadvantaged groups to access, succeed in and progress from higher education.

Every university or college registered with us that charges above the basic tuition fee cap must have an access and participation plan.

We expect universities and colleges to consider the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register when developing their plans. The risk register identifies disability as one characteristic to consider.

Data, insight and information

We collect student characteristics data for those studying at English higher education providers. Along with a broad range of other characteristics, it includes information about protected characteristics under the Equality Act 2010, one of which is disability. This includes data broken down for students who have reported a disability and those with no disability reported, as well as more detailed data broken down by type of disability reported.

We share student outcomes data which you can look at by university or college type and by student characteristics, one of which is disability. We also show this broken down by some broad categories of disability type.

We manage the National Student Survey, which is an independent survey that gathers final year undergraduate students’ opinions on their institution and experience of study across the UK. The survey achieves a consistently high response rate and we know that the results are important to students and universities and colleges. In July 2025, we published a blog looking at what the NSS can tell us about the experiences of disabled students.

We share the NSS data at a sector and university or college level, and you can filter this by a range of student characteristics, including disability status and disability type.

In autumn 2025, we published an Insight brief that explored the data and evidence we have about the experiences of disabled students and a summary of a student survey and focus groups that we commissioned through an independent research organisation.