You may have missed it, but just before Christmas some new survey results emerged on the experience of disabled students that ought to be the subject of several sector-wide new year’s resolutions.
Only 39 per cent of those who had support agreed reported having all of it implemented. 62 per cent said they had gone without some adjustments because the process of chasing them up consumed too much time and energy. And 43 per cent of disabled students reported that a staff member had treated their agreed support as a mere suggestion.
Almost half – 48 per cent – of disabled students believed they have received lower marks on their course because an assessment was not accessible, 73 per cent had to repeatedly explain the same aspects of their disability or access needs to different staff members, and 59 per cent needed to chase up support that has already been agreed.
And meanwhile if they’re trying to access Disabled Students Allowance(s), email turnaround times are now down to 37 days – or half a semester, as it’s more commonly known.
It’s just not worth it
In theory, Disabled Students UK’s now annual survey – which this year gathered 1,200 self-selecting responses from disabled students across over 80 UK higher education institutions (weighted for gender) – ought to represent a national scandal.
While there were some small signs of improvement over issues like lecture capture, as well as the reasonable adjustments issues above, only 21 per cent of disabled students felt that their modules had been designed with accessibility in mind – a key “anticipatory” duty.
Of those who encountered access issues, only a quarter reported having raised all of them – three in four hold back from raising because they don’t want to be seen as difficult, don’t think it will help, fear not being understood or believed by staff, or are concerned about taking resources away from other students.
Half reported that the adjustments provided were insufficient to put them on an equal footing with peers, 43 per cent experienced staff treating agreed support as optional, and a third felt pushed from one person to the next because it was unclear who was responsible for addressing their access needs. And only 40 per cent agree that the “majority” of staff outside of Disability Services understood their legal responsibility to make reasonable adjustments.
And over 6 in 10 of those who had adjustments agreed reported having gone without some of those adjustments because it takes too much time and energy to chase them up.
As well as the teaching and learning experience, just 38 per cent of in-person students with physical or sensory needs found their campus environment accessible, and some 44 per cent reported having been unable to attend a teaching session or supervision in person due to an inaccessible location.
And nearly half (46 per cent) of disabled students needing accessible student housing reported having had to pay extra to do so.
That all takes its toll. As well as the 48 per cent that believe they received a lower mark on their course due to an assessment not being accessible, 53 per cent reported their physical health suffering at some point during their degree, and 78 per cent reported their mental health suffering.
Maximums and minimums
So what is to be done, and who by? One option is aspirational charter marks of the sort embodied in the Disabled Students’ Commitment – but my guess is that will never catch on as an optional because of the lack of commercial benefit to having the gong.
Or we default back to the idea that this isn’t an aspiration, it’s a minimum – but in a fiscally tight environment characterised partly by culture wars over equality and partly over shedding already stretched staff, just as local authorities ration Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCP) for children with parents that can take them to court, it has to be at least possible that higher education providers are doing something similar.
That’s a situation designed for regulators – but in reality, if UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) was on the phone about to put a provider into special measures over immigration compliance, I know the panic and urgency with which previously seemingly intractable problems either in a central service or across academic departments can be fixed.
But there is no equivalent risk, and so no equivalent urgency. And anyway, in England the Office for Students (OfS) does “minimums” regulation on outcomes – stats on getting in, on and out – and facilitates aspirations on quality experience via the TEF.
It’s been pretty clear over the past few rounds of announced “boots on the ground” inspections that it’s only red flashing lights on the outcomes dashboard that trigger a look at experience – and even then through the optic of subject and/or partnerships, rather than the obvious differentials in experience between students with different characteristics.
Notwithstanding some fairly shocking numbers inside some of the disability categories over graduate outcomes, the sector really isn’t too bad on disabled students outcomes.
And so it does beg the question – what if disabled students aren’t getting the education they deserve (and have paid for), but battle on and get the outcomes anyway?
Pillar to post
As DK pointed out on the site back in October, OfS’ 2024 national student survey results split by student characteristics were not even accompanied by a commentary.
Every year the Office of the Independent Adjudicator (OIAHE)’s annual report reminds us about the volume of complaints it sees from disabled students – but there’s no evidence at all that there’s a loop back into regulatory action either in England or Wales.
The courts – including in the Abrahart case – don’t seem to be able to make their mind up about whether a failure to deliver reasonable adjustments represents a consumer protection law issue or an Equality Act 2010 issue.
If it’s the former, regular readers won’t need a reminder here about how hard it is for students to know their rights and enforce them, in an environment where OfS has been promising improvements since its inception.
And if it’s the latter, it’s really the Equality and Human Rights Commission that ought to be intervening – or is it?
When it took the opportunity to clarify its interpretation of the law around reasonable adjustments following the conclusion of the appeal in the Abrahart case, the EHRC said that:
…regulators like the OIA, and student bodies such as NUS and OfS will benefit from a clear statement of the law.
But OfS is pretty clear that its key tool is access and participation plans – and that A&P dashboard on its website is all about outcomes, not experience.
And anyway, the experience data that OfS does have is about disabled students being less satisfied in general – not on specific failures over the legal duties.
And so the issue feels like it gets passed around without resolution in the same way that disabled students often experience locally, and never with strategic-level resolution or grip, either locally or nationally.
Yes but sample size
Of course, a self-selecting sample from a survey explicitly about being a disabled student – and promoted in that way – may not be nationally representative.
And that’s a potential problem with the local results too. One of the things DSUK attempts to do with the results is to construct league table-able stats by provider – which this year has seen Cambridge University come out as the worst in the country.
In a statement, a university spokesperson said:
We take the views of our disabled students seriously. The sample size of 138 people for this survey represents just 2% of Cambridge’s disabled students. We regularly conduct higher-participation surveys and continually review our provision for disabled students.
I can argue that as it’s a legal duty, one student credibly reporting an issue should be a scandal, but if anything, the Cambridge response highlights the wider problem – of both how much and how little we know about the scale of the issue.
Over in the Netherlands, NSS results also highlight differentials in disabled student experience in general. But because there’s a set of extra questions that kick in on reasonable adjustments if a student is disabled, there’s also a raft of rich data on that issue too.
That set of splits and adjustments findings is published by a body that used to just focus on disabled students – but now also works more broadly on inclusivity. With funding from the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science, ECIO supports universities in a national approach to studying with a disability and support needs and student well-being.
It also handles what England would still call “premium funding” for disabled students, carries out customised assignments for individual providers, publishes wider research and advice on stuff like Universal Design for Learning, and generally works as an integrated enabler of the accessible education agenda.
It is still the case that individual disabled students need to know their rights and be able to enforce them. But the emerging question is whether the Office for Students, the OIA and the EHRC are the right bodies to be passing the parcel on reasonable adjustments.
I don’t know which of sticks, carrots or a mix of the two would be the most effective, and I don’t know whether OfS (and its emerging equivalents in Scotland and Wales) or a separate body is the right one to be driving the agenda.
Nor do I know enough about why there’s been a sharp increase in disabled students, and the extent to which that is treated as a success inside the culture of HE, or treated with “you wouldn’t get all this in the real world” suspicion. I’ve come across both anecdotally – frequently in the same institution.
What is clear is that universities are stretched, their staff are stretched and even (in England) OfS is stretched – and is making sure providers survive rather than highlighting the corners being cut to enable that survival.
What is also clear is that as it stands and without a defendable dataset or a proper plan, it’s not just locally where students are needing to explain the same information about disability over and over again. Disabled students deserve better.