Getting into university isn’t enough

When I started university in 2001 I was, by multiple indicators, a disadvantaged student.

I grew up in a deprived IMD1 East London borough, rated at the time as a POLAR1 area of very low participation in higher education. I received Free School Meals, and was the first generation of my family to have the opportunity to attend both further and then higher education.

I grew up in a single parent family, and throughout most of my time at university had to share access to a computer and internet connection with my two brothers – one of whom also had the pleasure of sharing a bedroom with me. I was working 20-24 hours a week while studying full time, in order to make being at university affordable, back before it was a fashionable norm.

I’ve got a green ticket

And yet, when I look back, I would never have ascribed to myself the labels of “disadvantaged,” “underrepresented,” or “widening participation student.”

To be honest, it was only later in my academic career, when I started getting involved in work to widen access and participation, that I came to understand that “Free School Meals” was used in the education sector as a marker of disadvantage, and that the receipt of them is a reliable predictor of inequitable educational outcomes.

The oblivious young me at school just had a green ticket that meant I didn’t have to pay for my lunch – along with a substantial proportion of my mates.

There is something in this which has always left me conflicted. How do we talk to and engage people from systematically excluded, disadvantaged (choose your own label) communities, when the professional language of inequality we use is, in many cases, the ordinary day to day business of being in that community – not a label used to mark out detriment?

And does someone – young people, in particular – benefit from knowing that these labels or characteristics are actually markers of disadvantage against which they should be encouraged by us all to rebel and overcome? In other words, would I travel back in time to burst the otherwise quite happy bubble of the free-lunch-enjoying younger version of myself and let him know that the green ticket in his hand was in fact a sign that society had already let him down?

Part of me sees the value in empowering young people with knowledge so that they know when they are being given the short straw and can rail against the unfairness. But another part of me also thinks it is the responsibility of those of us in positions to do something about it to break down these barriers, and let the kids eating free school meals focus on the really important things. Like whether to have chips or curly fries with your hot dog

In reality, though, two things can be true and important and necessary.

Making measurement meaningful

These thoughts and more have recently been prompted by the publication of the Social Mobility Commission’s Social Mobility Coefficient, and the joint guidance issued by Universities UK, the Sutton Trust and UCAS on best practice in contextual admissions.

These same thoughts also explain my motivation for wanting to more closely interrogate outcome data in higher education, and to propose another way of speaking about the contentious and complex concept of “value” in HE.

My report for the Post-18 Project is my own attempt at constructing a way of understanding the value that HE adds, outside of the usual narrow concept of post-study earnings.

While there are lots of things HE providers can’t directly control, what I think is squarely and unarguably within our control is the quality of educational opportunity that we provide to the students we choose to recruit. Outcome metrics are not, in and of themselves, measures of teaching quality. But the model I’ve proposed tries to capture a sense of the journey students take with us, and establish a clearer view on the extent to which providers are making a positive, neutral or negative impact on the wider sector’s performance.

I’m unapologetic about trying to frame the value of HE as the extent to which we ensure equitable outcomes for all. I make a number of arguments for why I think that’s right in my report, but ultimately I think it boils down to this: if we aren’t eliminating unfairness and inequality, then pretty much any other claims to success and societal value we might make feel somewhat hollow, even if true.

With that somewhat hard view being expressed, what I think my initial analysis shows is that there is some absolutely outstanding practice happening across the full spectrum of our sector. The Higher Education Value Index (HEVA) shows providers of all types, sizes, and regions making big inroads into reducing inequality of outcomes for the student communities they choose to serve.

Those providers show that the hard problem of eliminating inequality is just that: hard, but not impossible.

We do a great job measuring who gets into higher education, and a reasonably good job measuring outcomes. What we need to do now is turn the measures we have into practical tools that show us how to move from widening access to widening success.