Closing the Awarding Gap: ‘The Collective’ at Manchester Metropolitan University
“In order to get a real conversation going around race and anti-racism, it’s important that we have an environment of honesty, an environment of transparency, the opportunity for people to feel safe in terms of those conversations.”
Professor Martin Stringer, UUK
The imperative to address 'the wicked problem of degree award gaps' within UK higher education institutions is undeniably complex, multifaceted and messy. It necessitates a comprehensive and synergised approach that transcends systemic boundaries and conventional approaches.
While discussions surrounding the awarding gap have predominantly focused on decolonising the curriculum, which is vital, it is crucial to acknowledge the inherent value of incorporating the insights and living knowledges of students and professional services staff into this ongoing dialogue. It is essential to acknowledge that the curriculum does not exist in a vacuum, it is part of the institutional structure. Therefore, the inclusive convergence of forms of knowing and being, creates a broader and richer pool of thought processes and worldviews, that not only enriches the depth of analysis, but also allows the creation of innovative and equitable strategies to mitigate the awarding gap.
While academic staff remain at the forefront of shaping the educational content and pedagogical practices and processes underpinning the learning and teaching experience, addressing the degree awarding gap necessitates recognising its structural complexities, which transcend academic realms. Embracing students' and professional services insights enables an appreciation of a more holistic understanding of the systemic factors contributing to the gap.
The Universities UK report, ‘Closing ethnicity degree awarding gaps: three years on', highlights key drivers to closing the awarding gap:
Prioritise genuine co-production with students, jointly developing and implementing a strategic, whole-university approach to removing the gap.
Embed institutional approaches to removing degree awarding gaps, ensuring there is accountability for all staff within every academic faculty and every professional services department.
Develop evaluation expertise, building an understanding of what success looks like and how it can be maintained.
Thus, establishing a collaborative network that brings together students, professional services, and academics, offers a strategic conduit to foster a cohesive, supportive, and nurturing, and psychologically safe space, where candid, respectful and authentic dialogue can arise. This convergence offers a unique opportunity to cross-pollinate ideas, experiences, challenges and innovative practices, while simultaneously sustaining collective resolve to address the awarding gap.
‘The Collective’
The Collective is a sub-group of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Committee that brings together students, academics and professional services colleagues from across Manchester Metropolitan University to address the Racial Equity gaps (Degree awarding gap). It supports the raised visibility of the EDI team by further promoting the named EDI contacts for Faculties and the Faculty EDI delivery groups.
There were so many projects and initiatives in the many departments and teams across our institution that there was the increased possibility of duplication of work, loss of collective/shared learning and an inability for colleagues to support one another, as they were simply unaware that events were taking place until it was too late. Although there are Department and Faculty-based awarding gap groups and individuals, for example, the Inclusive Learning Communities project, the Race Staff Forum and work undertaken by the University Teaching Academy (including developing a webpage on Addressing Awarding Gaps), there was no single, unified space - be it online or in person - where colleagues specifically working on addressing awarding gaps across the institution can come together and share their living knowledges and experiences in this area.
Therefore, Dr Josephine Gabi, from the Faculty of Health and Education, and Dr Eileen Pollard of the University Teaching Academy, formed The Collective. This initiative meets the needs outlined above by providing colleagues with a 'safe' and nurturing space based on agreed principles and objectives, where they meet regularly to discuss what is working and the challenges they face, so they can seek support, energy and inspiration from one another and share resources.
The work of academics, students and professional services colleagues within The Collective takes the form of action-oriented teaching and/or research initiatives in this important area, and, in terms of the latter, these are broadly defined as Scholarship of Learning and Teaching (SoTL) with a focus on EDI impact. So, for example, colleagues may apply for funding on a project to address a specific awarding gap on their programme and receive peer support throughout that process from The Collective.
The work undertaken will also help colleagues applying for career progression through our Education, Pedagogy and Citizenship (EPC) pathway to become Readers and/or Professors.
How does ‘The Collective’ work?
Holding space for regular meetings – monthly, reviewing objectives at each.
Holding principled space for staff and students to share their living knowledges and practice, transcending conventional boundaries.
White colleagues adopt allyship as part of their approach.
Creating an online repository.
Mapping to Education, Pedagogy and Citizenship pathway to demonstrate to colleagues how this work is linked to this route to progression.
Ensuring shared decision-making processes and ownership.
Organising university-wide webinars to share examples of good practice.
Organising global SoTL conferences that seek to address racial equity in HE.
Why do we need it?
To allow for more effective, context-specific and collective organising in terms of the work on appropriate solutions to address racial disparities (the awarding gaps).
To promote when ally involvement is appropriate and when it is not.
Promoting co-production of research between academics, professional services colleagues and students (research grants) to challenge knowledge production hierarchies.
To help colleagues map their work to the Education, Pedagogy and Citizenship pathway for their own professional development and career progression.
To build greater trackability and accountability for what is working (and what is not) to address racial disparities (degree awarding gaps).
Lead conversations by organising conferences focusing on action-oriented strategies to achieve racial equity.
Concluding thoughts
Through a shared focus on relationality, The Collective offers a vital space for working in solidarity to foster inclusive higher education for all. We have made progress on cultivating an ethos of active listening, openness, humanising and authentically liberating dialogue that affirms and validates marginalised epistemologies. This approach involves learning to unlearn together. Unlearning, as a horizontal orientation to openness, disrupts how knowledge is produced and circulated to promote collective visioning, where no one person owns the knowledge or The Collective.
As an initiative that is anchored on co-creation and co-ownership, The Collective sustains an ethos of transparency, responsibility and accountability. As such, students, professional services colleagues, and academics take turns facilitating monthly meetings. Sharing insights has allowed us to appreciate the transformative power of our expertise and experiences, in order to co-create living knowledges that counter systems of oppression.
We invite students, professional services colleagues and academics across the sector who are working on addressing awarding gaps and racial equity to find out more about The Collective by emailing Dr Eileen Pollard at e.pollard@mmu.ac.uk.
About the authors
Dr Josephine Gabi (She/Her/Hers) is a Reader in Education at Manchester Metropolitan University. Grounded in Black feminist thought, and antiracist praxis, she is dedicated to challenging disembodied pedagogy in the early years education and care and undoing forms of coloniality in curricula and relational encounters. Josephine embraces solidarity as a tool of resistance to the matrix of domination and a critical orientation towards liberated futures. Her work advances co-creation as a liberatory pedagogy that facilitates relational agency.
Dr Eileen Pollard worked as a Senior Lecturer in English Literature at the University of Chester and then as a Learner Developer at Manchester Metropolitan University. She has over ten years experience teaching in HE and joined the University Teaching Academy at Manchester Metropolitan in February 2022.
