Birmingham City University’s (BCU) access and participation plan (2024/25 to 2027/28) includes objectives to raise absolute attainment to reduce inequality of opportunity for Black and Asian students. BCU’s Strategy 2030 vision is to ensure that it offers inspiring and inclusive learning environments that have meaningful impact on the lives and mobility of our students: Eliminating the ethnicity degree awarding gap (EDAG) is an institutional priority.
At BCU, we have been on a journey to meaningfully embed the student voice into everything we do. A significant marker of this has been ‘Project Zero’ – a cross-university initiative designed to re-focus the institution on eliminating the EDAG between White students and Black African/Caribbean and South Asian heritage students.
While it is often assumed that senior buy-in exists, due to access and participation plans requiring institutions to answer for inequality, a closer look may reveal tokenistic inclusivity, lacking deep knowledge and understanding of how to safely centre the voices of Black students, with pervasive deficit-based language and action that position Black students as problems to be fixed.
Truthfully, securing senior buy-in depends less on what staff and students do, and more about the willingness of senior stakeholders to reflect, listen, and learn from their teams and student communities. As such, when the Academic Board – chaired by our Vice Chancellor Professor David Mba – were presented with the risk of the EDAG, it called for a truly student-centred, whole-provider approach. In response, ‘Project Zero’ was developed to ensure that students’ feedback is meaningfully channelled through to the Academic Board. BCU secured an independent research team, with Insight Education, that specialises in the educational experiences of Black heritage students in higher education, ensuring discussion and engagement with the needs of Black students.
Findings of ‘Project Zero’ indicated that over-assessment was one of the major barriers to the equality of outcomes for Black students.
As part of this ongoing focus on the EDAG, BCU joined TASO’s ethnicity degree awarding gap project in 2023, which provided expert guidance and support for developing a theory of change for reducing the Black-white student EDAG. As a result of ongoing work on assessment enhancement, BCU identified that it needed to rethink not only what we assessed, but how we communicated assessment. Working with TASO-appointed expert evaluators, BCU produced an exemplar Core and Enhanced Theory of Change and an evaluation plan. These underpinned our new cross-disciplinary initiative to enhance assessment literacy among university teaching colleagues, with staff development structured around inclusive assessment principles, equity in assessment, and the application of authentic tasks that reflect diverse learner needs.
A new ‘Package of assessment design and delivery’ was launched in the 2024/25 academic year across selected Level 5 and 6 modules, identified as most likely to be affected by EDAGs, and with high populations of Black, Asian and ethnic minority students. Focused on the changes BCU could make to our own educational approach, this intervention steps away from deficit models that put the onus on students to overcome the burdens of systemic, socio-economic, and educational inequalities. We addressed the need for constructive alignment and standardisation in both formative and summative assessment practices. We also recognised that academics vary in their levels of pedagogical understanding, and therefore needed a variety of supportive measures, and reflective space to systematically develop academically rigorous and inclusive assessments.
To create a more consistent approach, a suite of practical templates and activities helped staff design and communicate assessments clearly, including:
Early implementation showed promising results but also revealed just how uneven assessment practice had been. Many colleagues lacked confidence in designing inclusive tasks, and simplifying briefs represented a significant culture shift. Semester 1 module performance indicated green shoots, with improvements in first attempt pass rates among Black students on treatment modules, alongside an increase in the proportion of students achieving over 60%, contributing to closure of ethnicity awarding gaps at module and institutional levels. Work is now underway to apply a robust evaluation methodology to post-resit results from the 2024/25 academic year, with a view to share ‘what works’ with the sector.
Our work is now expanding to include a new ‘package of feedback and feedforward’ – the next step in building an inclusive assessment journey for all students. This work has shown that improving assessment is not just about rewriting documents; it is about rethinking how we design learning experiences. By centring the voices of our Black students, our entire university now benefits from enhanced quality in assessment and feedback practice. Collaborating across academic and professional spaces, we have turned complex and opaque assessment practices into something consistent, transparent and equitable. ‘Project Zero’ continues to seek new ways to engage and centre the voices of our Black, African, Caribbean, and South Asian heritage students. Our students have truly co-created our new access and participation plan, and are at the heart of our new Education Strategy.