Riding Wave One: Insights from Access and Participation Planning at the University of Derby

How it all started 

Maybe it was the hole left in our lives by no longer having a TEF submission to draft, but in those early days of 2023, putting our hand up to volunteer to be a part of Wave One for the new Access and Participation Plan (APP) submissions seemed like such a good idea. At the time we hadn’t seen the requirements for the new style APPs, so we had no real sense of what we were letting ourselves in for but, as an institution with a proud reputation for our work on Social Mobility, it would have been strange to not be willing to join the vanguard. 

As the days grew longer and Winter gave way to Spring, we finally got word. We had been selected as one of the chosen institutions to join the Wave One. Having successfully navigated the process and had our plan approved, here I share a few observations from our journey and offer up my three and half top tips for those riding the second wave. 

Expectations versus Reality 

There had been some clear signals from the OfS that nature of the new APPs would be substantially different from those that went before. For all their good intentions, previous plans had not delivered the anticipated widening of access or improvements in outcomes for the target groups and there was a lack of detail as to how such impact would, could and should be measured. The direction of travel was therefore reasonably clear well before the publication of the regulatory guidance. John Blake – the Director of Fair Access and Participation at the OfS – had spoken at a number of events espousing his view that APPs needed to be more evidence driven and to have a stronger focus upon evaluation. It was no surprise then when, at the end of March, Regulatory Notice 1 (RN1) set out exactly this position.  

RN1 was a discussion document, shared with the opportunity for interested parties to respond. We did share our thoughts, although with the same expectation that such comment would be acted upon as for other OfS consultations! Accompanying RN1 was the EORR – the Equality of Opportunity Risk Register. The EORR - which when said out loud does sound the same as AA Milne’s melancholic Donkey and evokes similar feelings in those that read it – sets out the twelve prime risks to accesses and participation that institutions are expected to map against in their new APPs. However, it was not until the 18th May that the actual Regulatory Advice on APPs was published, just eight weeks before the submission date for the new plans.  

Just Do It! 

This at least is where a cynical disposition proved to have some value. My assumption that the consultation on RN1 was nothing more than the usual opportunity for the OfS to ignore any feedback from the sector and do what it wanted, had meant that we had begun work back in March when information first became available. And herein lies my first piece of advice. As Nike say, Just Do It! Start planning and developing your APP at the earliest possible time. Writing as I am in the autumn of 2023, I’d suggest that if you haven’t already started you really should have and need to do so as soon as you can. I hope that following the Wave One experience some details of the guidance will change, but the main thrust will not differ so there is no reason to not be cracking on. We may have done ours in eight weeks, but I really would not recommend it. 

KISS 

This is also the appropriate time to also give my second tip. KISS! As in, Keep it Simple Stupid.  

It is easy to get lost in the data swamp that surrounds the APP. The OfS APP dashboard provides a start, but you also have your B3 metrics, data on widening access activity, admissions stats (not represented in the B3 data but vital none-the-less), as well as an exhortation to use your internal data. It is quite literally a swamp. 

With any large mass of data, if you throw enough statistical tests at it, you will find relationships and patterns, but in very much the way that if you stare long enough at the vividly patterned carpet in the VC’s office you start to see faces, animals and other pictures appearing. Don’t, just don’t do that!  

You should know your students and, if you don’t, then you shouldn’t be writing the APP. If you’re not sure, go and speak to whoever wrote your TEF submission because they will. Better still (and this is the ½ of my three and half tips) engage your students to help you understand the actual barriers they face. Create your hypotheses based on your prior experience and institutional strategy. Narrow the EORR to those risks most relevant to your context. Then, and only then, should you turn to the data.  

Read the room, not just the numbers 

At this point you also need to remember that the APP is a political document. It is your institutional manifesto setting out what you intend to do to address barriers to access and participation. But just like a political manifesto, you need to create something that others will support, and you believe you can deliver. Securing the support of your internal governance should be relatively straight forward, but you need to create something that will meet the expectations of an increasingly interventionist OfS. So, make sure you have looked carefully at what is said in the Regulatory Advice.  

For Wave One, and I suspect the same will be true in Wave Two, there was a clear expectation that the plan would address access barriers and the raising of educational attainment in schools. Similarly, that action would be taken to address barriers faced by those with a mental health condition. Omit these at your peril, even if you believe they are not an issue in your context. 

The End of the Beginning 

There is so much more I could say about the process and our Wave One experience, but there is insufficient space. I have tried to extract the tips which will have the most relevance at this point in the cycle and to the widest number of institutions. It was notable at a recent event how many institutions had not yet started in earnest their preparations; I can’t stress enough how important it is to get started.  

Our plan has been approved, I believe one of only a handful at the time of writing, but getting your plan approved is very much just the end of the beginning. Now we need to start to deliver that which we set out in the plan. As I look down the road at the tasks ahead, I am as confident as I can be that we will do the things we said we’d do. Where I see the more significant challenge is in implementing the systematic evaluation strategies to measure the impact of the activity that will be necessary to really meet the intent of John Blake’s vision of the new APPs.