Uni Connect: Guidance on priorities

How to identify underrepresented groups to target

The strategic outreach and attainment-raising elements of the programme are intended to benefit individuals from groups that are underrepresented in higher education. Uni Connect partnerships will determine which groups to engage. In doing so the partnerships could consider:

• the characteristics of groups in the Associations Between Characteristics of Students (ABCS) (access) quintile 1 and 2
• the underrepresented groups listed in OfS access and participation plan guidance regulatory notice 1
• the way in which characteristics combine to increase underrepresentation, for example white males from lower socioeconomic backgrounds
• local context, including whether there are groups that are underrepresented in higher education at a local level even if these groups are not underrepresented at a national level.

The targeted outreach element of the programme is focused on learners in specific areas.

Alignment with access and participation plans

Uni Connect provides an effective, efficient route through which higher education providers can collaborate to deliver on any commitments set out in their access and participation plans. We encourage providers to make use of Uni Connect partnerships throughout the access and participation plan process though it is not a requirement. Uni Connect could be a useful partner for providers through which Risk 2 and Risk 3 on the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register are addressed.

There can be significant regional or national crossover on priorities within access and participation plans and the Uni Connect programme plays a vital role in coordinating activity to prevent duplication of effort or target learners being overwhelmed.

Tracking and attributing joint activities

All engagement with learners that is Uni Connect funded, even in part, should be recorded in a tracking service. A tracking service is a service created to track long term individual learner outcomes in relation to higher education. The Higher Education Access Tracker, Aimhigher West Midlands tracking service or East Midlands Widening Participation Research Evaluation Partnership are examples of this.

The targeted outreach element of Uni Connect is intended to be funded entirely by the OfS. Therefore this activity is expected to be attributed solely to the Uni Connect partnership.

For the strategic outreach and attainment-raising elements of the programme, collaborative activity is strongly encouraged and we expect that activities might be jointly attributed in tracking. Through the data-sharing functionality built into all tracking services, partnerships are able to add any other member organisation as a delivery partner and jointly attribute any activity or student records. This allows a transparent record on which organisations worked together with the learner or on the intervention.

Access and participation plan monitoring is focused on longer term outcomes for students and not on numbers of learners engaged. Activity that has been carried out jointly between a higher education provider and a Uni Connect partnership can be attributed to the Uni Connect partnership in the normal monitoring process without fear of it being ‘double counted’ in any way as monitoring of access and participation plans is approached differently.

Uni Connect partnerships and higher education providers will not be penalised for working with the same learners where it is addressing coinciding priorities (for example, attainment raising).