Project | Supporting disabled students: Mapping reasonable adjustments and transition support

About Supporting disabled students: Mapping reasonable adjustments and transition support

To address the gap in research on what support is effective for disabled students, we commissioned Advance HE to map the kinds of support available in two key areas: transition support and reasonable adjustments. 

The research adopted a multi-pronged mixed methods approach, including: a desk-based review of English higher education providers’ current provision; a survey open to all higher education provider staff with a responsibility for designing and implementing transition support and/or reasonable adjustments; focus groups with disabled students to investigate their experiences of transition support and reasonable adjustments; and a combination of focus groups and interviews exploring any novel or interesting approaches to transition support and reasonable adjustments. 

The findings examine the experiences of a broad range of disabled students and higher education provider staff to identify successes and challenges in the implementation of transition support and reasonable adjustments, and highlighting the frequency with which current approaches are applied, including the evaluation methods most commonly used to monitor their effectiveness.

Background

Disabled students represent a significant proportion of the higher education population. In 2023 the number of accepted UK applicants who had disclosed a disability increased by approximately 34% compared to 2022.Disaggregated by level of study, approximately 14% of research postgraduates and 10% of taught postgraduate UK students disclosed a disability. Effective support to enable disability inclusion is therefore more vital than ever. 

Our report What works to reduce equality gaps for disabled students found that, despite the legal requirements and funding, there is little research on what support is effective and no clear overview of what reasonable adjustments are currently in place.