Blog13 October 2026
Since February 2026, I have had the privilege of working as a UK Research and Innovation (UKRI) policy fellow with TASO on contextual admissions in higher education. This fellowship builds on my work in university admissions since my own doctorate in 2007, as well as substantial sector experience in implementing and evaluating contextual policies.
Today, the central question for the sector is rarely whether institutions will or should contextualise. Instead, the questions are: what precisely is contextualisation intended to change?; how does it achieve that change?; and what does robust evaluation look like? It is also important to consider how we differentiate contextualisation that is primarily for social justice and diversity reasons, from contextualisation that is primarily for recruitment reasons.
Building on recent work by Universities UK, UCAS and the Sutton Trust, TASO and I have been working on two specific strands of the fellowship.
- First, we have started working with six higher education providers to develop theories of change for their contextual admissions policies.
- Second, we have interviewed 23 careers and progression advisers in schools to understand whether, and if so how, contextualisation affects advice about higher education opportunities.
Making the causal assumptions visible
We had a hugely positive response to our call for providers to work with us on developing a theory of change for their contextualised admissions approach. The level of interest and quality of responses suggest this is a timely project. We saw many examples of considered practice, alongside a clear appetite across the sector to think more deeply about how contextualised admissions work in practice.
We were able to select a varied group of providers, providing case studies that reflect the breadth of contextualisation across the sector, including variation in eligibility criteria, the size and form of adjustment, the point at which context enters decision-making, and the relationship between contextualised admissions and wider access activity.
With each provider, we will work with staff involved in designing and delivering contextualised admissions, refining our understanding of how the policy works in their institutional context, and articulating this through a theory of change.
This part of the project will generate individual theories of change for contextualised admissions policies at six providers, and a report outlining learnings and recommendations to strengthen future evaluations.
A clear initial takeaway is that there is no single, bounded institutional intervention that constitutes ‘contextual admissions’.
Also, the position of the UKRI fellowship encourages us to consider the broader change that contextual admissions are intended to achieve — not only for individual students and institutions, but across the higher education sector as a whole in relation to widening participation.
The impact of contextualisation starts long before admissions
Alongside this institutional work, our doctoral research assistant Charlie Berry has conducted 23 interviews with careers and progression advisers in schools and colleges, with further interviews planned.
The interviews highlight how contextual admissions can affect behaviour before an application is ever made. Advisers describe navigating a complex landscape of different institutional criteria, course-level rules and measures of disadvantage.
Some see contextual offers as widening a student’s perceived range of choices, making an institution or course feel possible where headline entry requirements might otherwise have ruled them out. Others describe students who do not recognise themselves in categories such as ‘young carer’ or ‘first generation’, or who are reluctant to disclose information associated with disadvantage.
This suggests evaluations should ideally capture whether, and how, contextualisation changes application patterns.
Contextualisation does not end at entry
The interview participants also repeatedly moved the conversation beyond access. Advisers frequently raised questions about academic transition, belonging and the support available after entry. Some distinguished between a reduced offer alone, and approaches in which contextual admissions sit alongside integrated mentoring and transition support.
This also raises more fundamental evaluation questions: how do we measure the ‘success’ of contextualisation; and what exactly are we estimating when we ask whether contextual admissions work?
The original fellowship brief deliberately includes continuation, degree outcomes, wellbeing, belonging and labour-market outcomes alongside access. But there may be different views on the most appropriate comparator group or counterfactual, and on whether success should be evaluated at the individual or wider cohort level.
Analysis and resources
Over the coming months, we will develop our work with the six partner providers, and will continue analysing the adviser interviews and exploring how our work can inform robust future evaluations.
Alongside this, we are considering how to package this new and existing research as a practical resource for providers. These resources will aim to answer questions such as: where does contextualisation begin?; where does it end?; and what do we need to observe if we really want to know whether it works?