Mapping reasonable adjustments and transitions support for disabled students

Earlier this year TASO published a report on ‘What works to reduce equality gaps for disabled students’. This report summarises the evidence on the effectiveness of interventions to address inequalities in higher education (HE)  among disabled students in the UK.

Although the review found evidence to suggest that transitions support can be effective for enabling disability inclusion, little of this evidence was from a UK context, particularly Type 3 evidence. The review also established that there is no clear overview of the reasonable adjustments that HEPs put in place to support disabled students.

The aim of this project is to develop a blueprint for evidence-based transitions support which offers potential for adaptation, implementation and evaluation across the HE sector in order to provide more consistent support for disabled students. The blueprint is being developed through collaboration between the evaluator and three higher education providers (HEPs).

Dr Helen Lawson, Research Manager at TASO said: 

“This is a very exciting project for TASO. I’m looking forward to working with partners to develop an intervention blueprint for disabled student support. Creating an intervention blueprint that all providers can use to develop and evaluate their support for disabled students has the potential to contribute important evidence to this area of work.”

Lisa Collyer, Higher Education Delivery Manager at City College Norwich, said:

“City College Norwich is delighted to be working with TASO as part of this project, alongside other HE providers. We are particularly pleased to represent the college-based higher education sector in helping to shape a blueprint for transition support for disabled students that can be applied across the higher education sector.”

Priya Khambhaita, Consulting Director at RSM UK Consulting LLP, said:

“The Social Policy team at RSM UK are delighted to be working with TASO to deliver a project exploring HE transition support for students with disabilities. We are very keen to build on our previous work in this space and are looking forward to collaborating with the three appointed higher education providers to map optimal support for disabled students. The evidence-based blueprint intervention developed through this exercise will be expansive and adaptable to different intervention contexts – it will be ready for use by practitioners across the wider HE sector.”

Dr Andrea MacLeod, Associate Professor in Autism Studies at the University of Birmingham, said:

“We are very excited to be partnering with TASO and other higher education providers to improve transitions support for disabled students. We very much hope that this project will have a substantial impact and that the lessons learnt can inform policy and practice across the sector more widely. Our focus will be exploring how to make Personal Academic Tutorials more supportive spaces in which to have conversations about reasonable adjustments, developing resources to support this and subsequently evaluating their impact on student wellbeing and outcomes.”