Project | What works to reduce equality gaps for disabled students

About What works to reduce equality gaps for disabled students in higher education?

Disabled students continue to face challenges during their journey into, through and beyond higher education, despite positive changes in supportive legislation, funding and enhanced provision. 
This project began with an evidence review of the impact of interventions used to support disabled students, working with the University of Lincoln. The resulting report suggests there is a need for more and better evaluation of interventions to address inequalities for disabled students in higher education, and also identified a number of specific evaluation challenges.

To build the evidence base, we partnered with four higher education providers and two independent evaluators to conduct pilot evaluations of their interventions to support disabled students.

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.

To strengthen the support that higher education providers give to disabled students during their transition into higher education, we commissioned RSM UK to work with three providers to develop a blueprint for transition support. This provides a set of evidence-informed activities and programmes.

If you would like to find out more or have any questions around this project, please get in touch with us at research@taso.org.uk.

Related resources

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% from the previous year. 

While disabled students may have already developed an extensive set of organisation, self-management and resilience skills, they may have more difficult study trajectories, experience less satisfaction with their experience, and worse education and employment outcomes in comparison to other students.

Effective support to enable disability inclusion is therefore more vital than ever.