Project | Theory of change to tackle ethnicity degree awarding gaps 

About the project

To support the sector to better understand and evaluate their interventions which aim to tackle the ethnicity degree awarding gap, we commissioned Staffordshire University and Advance HE to work with six higher education providers to produce theories of change and evaluation plans for their interventions.

A Core Theory of Change, Enhanced Theory of Change and evaluation plan for each provider and their associated interventions are included below. The evaluation plans vary depending on the maturity of the intervention and where possible, recommendations for producing Type 3 (causal) evidence are made. For interventions that have never previously been implemented, however, the evaluation methodologies are more exploratory, or ‘pilot evaluations’.

Further resources

Background

Among the inequalities in higher education in the UK, the degree awarding gap between students from marginalised ethnic backgrounds and their white peers is one of the most persistent and longstanding. Addressing it has become an increasingly important aim for the higher education sector, and the Office for Students has a key performance measure to address it. 
Over the last decade, interventions across the sector have sought to tackle inequalities with respect to race or ethnicity. However, the persistence of the degree awarding gap has revealed a myriad of complexities and challenges for higher education providers, and so the pace of change has been slow.