Triangle

Introduction

At the University of Nottingham (UoN), we pursue a comprehensive strategy to foster an equitable and participatory culture for the entire university community. Our access and participation plan (APP) reflects our core values of openness, inclusiveness, ambition, fairness, and respect.

The APP is both a university-level key performance indicator (KPI) in its own right, and an important consideration in our other KPIs relating to the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF), Graduate Outcomes (GO), and National Student Survey (NSS). The objectives identified in our APP inform our new mental health strategy, our strategic delivery plans, and our student-centred approach to teaching and learning.

This plan builds on our commitment to the Equality Act 2010 and the fulfilment of responsibilities under our public sector equality duty. Major focus areas include instituting reasonable accommodations, upholding impartial admissions practices, developing representative curricula and assessments, and maintaining rigorous policies that guarantee access and engagement for all.

Through strategic alignment, transparent governance, and data-driven continuous improvement, we strive to eliminate systemic barriers. This comprehensive approach demonstrates our commitment to a 'whole provider' ethos for Access and Participation.


Strategic leadership advancing a whole provider approach

At UoN our Pro Vice-Chancellor for Education and Student Experience (PVC for ESE) is the senior responsible officer for the Access and Participation Plan. The PVC for ESE works closely with the Pro Vice-Chancellor for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), People and Culture to lead the embedding of our access and participation values and activities across the institution. This partnership means joined-up inclusive policies and support services to tackle intersectional barriers at all stages of the student life cycle and the staff journey.

By co-developing inclusive curriculum frameworks, the PVCs embed APP into academic practice, with a recent whole institutional curriculum transformation project leading the way. Senior leaders collaborate to ensure that APP principles are woven into every aspect of the student experience. This includes outreach, support services, assessment practices, and curricular design. The goal is to create an environment conducive to success for all learners.

The PVCs raise the visibility and momentum of these vital issues through regular communications to the UoN community, like blogs and newsletters that report on progress while maintaining agenda focus. They also lend visible senior support to key diversity calendar events such as Black History Month and LGBTQIA+ History Month, underscoring inclusion and belonging as an institution-wide, year-round ethos.

The Senior Leadership team uses positional influence and expertise to set the tone for transparency and accountability from the top. Vocal leadership via communications and visible allyship sustains strategic momentum. It also fosters a distributed culture of collective ownership for APP progress across faculties and professional services.


Unified planning for equality of opportunity: A whole-university approach

UoN’s comprehensive Education and Student Experience Strategic Delivery Plan (ESE SDP) fosters equal access and participation across the entire institution. APP principles underpin all endeavours spanning education, research, support and wellbeing, community partnerships, and digital innovations.

The ESE SDP prioritises inclusivity, wellbeing, diversifying student intake, and providing support for students who are typically under-represented in higher education. Equality considerations are embedded into curriculum design, programme reviews, reasonable adjustment policies, contextual offers, and anti-racism education initiatives.

The Civic Strategic Delivery Plan aligns seamlessly, fostering partnerships with local communities on widening participation activities to support aspirations, access, and attainment among underrepresented groups. Curriculum co-design with these partners ensures diverse voices shape an inclusive culture.

UoN is also committed to local and regional educational improvement programmes, including the Nottingham Education Improvement Board and works closely with the Department for Education (DfE) on the Derby and Nottingham Priority Areas programme.

UoN's commitment to student wellbeing

UoN's new Mental Health and Wellbeing strategy, developed through extensive co-creation with students and staff, demonstrates a holistic approach to promoting continuation, progression, and improved attainment. Guided by the step-change framework and the vision of empowering students, this collaborative strategy recognises that poor mental health often stems from inequality, oppression, and exclusion.

The strategy’s mission focuses on fostering a positive culture shift across all aspects of university life, emphasising shared responsibility in providing accessible and timely support. Evidence-based monitoring, evaluation, and the development of a Wellbeing Assessment Toolkit ensure a reflective, inclusive process that considers the impact on student wellbeing from the outset. This work is further enhanced with UoN's University Mental Health Charter Programme and its alignment with the Health and Wellbeing Strategy.

Prior to the development of the strategy, UoN's commitment to supporting student mental health was evident through substantial improvements in whole-university structures aimed at enhancing access to support interventions for students with mental health conditions, including those that may be considered disabled.

These improvements encompass several key initiatives:

In the academic year 2021/22, we introduced a "Hub and Spoke" Student Support and Wellbeing team. This team includes Student Support and Wellbeing Officers stationed in academic schools. Their role is to facilitate early disclosure of mental health concerns and provide interventions tailored to students' specific academic contexts. This structure is designed to seamlessly integrate with personal tutor systems and enable effective referral to specialist practitioners as needed.

Additionally, a Mental Health Advisory Service operates in conjunction with this structure. This service offers specialised support for students grappling with ongoing or acute mental health issues. It manages partnership relationships with general practitioners and NHS mental health services, ensuring students have easy access to community support services. UoN has established multidisciplinary support networks that span academic, residential, and social environments. These networks ensure coordinated interventions and support plans for students with significant support requirements related to their mental health.

The university has established a Student Wellbeing Advisory Panel. This panel plays a vital role in co-creating and reviewing support services and communications, ensuring they are responsive to student needs. UoN's commitment to student mental health is further demonstrated through its engagement with the University Mental Health Charter award programme.

This robust approach to student wellbeing, coupled with a new attendance and engagement system, allows for early identification of disengaging students, especially those from underrepresented groups like mature learners. Personalised outreach strategies increase the chances of retention, progression, and attainment by fostering a sense of belonging throughout the student lifecycle.

UoN's Belonging Toolkit complements these efforts, encouraging staff to deliberately cultivate an environment that promotes equity, inclusion, and progression for all learners.

The Learning and Development strategy expands professional development opportunities for all staff, aiming to enhance education and training, especially around APP themes like the Black White degree awarding gap. Woven through all these strategies is the digital accessibility strategy, which is linked to our commitment to Public Sector Bodies Accessibility Regulations (PSBARs), and which has led to significant progress in the last two years in the accessibility of teaching and learning. The Learning and Development strategy is intentionally designed to facilitate positive cultural change and equitable student experiences.

UoN stands out as one of the most sought-after universities by leading recruiters, as highlighted in the 2024 Graduate Market report by High Fliers Research. We achieve this through using an evidence-based approach in delivering activities and services aimed at maximising progression outcomes for all groups of students.

Our Careers and Employability Service (CES) offers a range of support targeted at students with disabilities or long-term health conditions. For example, CES runs an online course which allows students to explore available support options when considering their career paths. We run an autism mentoring programme and the East Midlands Disability Conversation event, which brings together students from local institutions. This event aims to provide insights from workplace speakers, facilitate the sharing of stories, and help students prepare for the transition to the workplace. Our commitment to support for neurodiversity is led by the Faculty of Science’s NEO-Next and NEO-Now programmes. These support a more neurodiverse workforce by providing students and the local community with employment opportunities.

UoN recognises the important role of Degree Apprenticeships in widening access to higher education in specific higher order skills-shortage areas. To grow our provision, and the quality of our support for apprentices, we have established an Institute for Professional and Work-Based Learning. The Institute works with employers to develop provision reflective of our research strengths, with a particular emphasis on Data, Digital, Biomedical and Health Sciences, and Engineering.

UoN is committed to aligning our monitoring, continuous improvement, and periodic review processes with our APP targets to ensure accountability towards our risk groups' performance. This involves evaluating school and department-level performance, informed by data aligned with potential equality of opportunity risks. We integrate student partners and voice mechanisms, as well as external perspectives, to ensure rigorous and expertise-led practices.


Setting an institutional culture for access and participation

We have worked hard to become the first UK university to attain Athena Swan Gold. Building on the processes, infrastructure for change and ‘lessons learnt’, we can harness this accomplishment to fuel and support APP initiatives. Achieving Gold demonstrates the progress we have made on our journey of institutional transformation and cultural shift towards inclusivity and accessibility. This recognition reinforces our determination and ability to drive substantial change in access and participation.

The 2021 Race Equality Charter bronze award exemplifies UoN's strategic commitment to race equality through an intersectional, community-engaged plan. Rejecting deficit-based thinking, our action plan centres organisational leadership in enacting positive change. Data analysis revealing disproportionate Covid-19 and racial injustice impacts informed targeted actions. This award demonstrates UoN's resolve to address systemic racism and inequities and forms part of an overarching, proactive access, and participation strategy. Collective responsibility, capacity building, and cross-sector collaboration underpin a unified vision spanning the entire student journey.

The collective commitment of our leaders is reinforced through the ReMEDI Reverse Mentoring Project. This pairs racially minoritised staff/students with senior leaders of different ethnicities. The goal is to enhance leaders' understanding of racially minoritised student experiences, fostering dialogue to address barriers and create a more inclusive culture. This understanding then informs strategic change by senior leaders across the whole institution.

UoN is committed to fostering inclusivity and accessibility in higher education. To achieve this, we have developed diverse pathways through foundation years, ensuring that students from various backgrounds have the opportunity to pursue higher education. These tailored programmes provide essential support and resources to empower individuals from underrepresented groups to become students at UoN and thrive academically. We have recommitted to the continuation of our Arts Foundation programme at the reduced fee level of £5,760 from 2025/26.

The Personal Tutoring Project reimagines support structures across the institution to deliver tailored assistance through trained tutors supporting marginalised students. Through Inclusive coaching approaches, increased accessibility, the project aims to reduce achievement gaps, and enhance participation. Efficient case management, tracking, and accountability contribute to a safe learning environment that promotes equitable engagement. This proactive approach, linking to the expanded support services, focuses on progression, continuation, and academic success. It fosters a culture of ambition, creativity, and inclusivity, ensuring equal opportunities for success.

At UoN we demonstrate our dedication to creating an inclusive community from the very start of a student's journey through the implementation of a Get Ready for UoN pre-arrival module embedded within the onboarding process for new students. In the 2023/24 academic year, a remarkable 72% of newly registered students, amounting to 8,253 individuals, signed up for this module. This, along with our new Cultural Humility module, fosters a supportive environment built on mutual understanding, inclusion, and respect. By proactively instilling these values during the onboarding phase, UoN nurtures a culture of inclusivity that extends throughout a student's entire university experience.

The recent Disability-Inclusive Nottingham initiative, backed by a substantial £500,000 investment, reflects UoN's commitment to removing barriers and fostering parity of experience for disabled students across all aspects of university life. This significant allocation of resources underscores our dedication to creating an inclusive environment that not only accommodates but actively supports and elevates the diverse needs of its entire student body.


Fostering transformative partnerships

UoN has forged a transformative partnership with Nottingham Trent University that exemplifies our joint, deep-rooted commitment to fostering inclusivity and engagement within the broader community to improve educational opportunities. This partnership with NTU has led to the joint attainment of University of Sanctuary status. This is a national recognition of our commitment to welcome and integrate individuals seeking sanctuary into our communities. University of Sanctuary status demonstrates our dedication to cultivating a culture of awareness, compassion, and belonging that extends beyond our campus boundaries.

A new partnership with the East Midlands Education Trust (EMET) has been approved by the DfE to open a new 16-19 Maths School in Nottingham, potentially starting in September 2025. UoN Maths School has the aim of widening participation in Maths and STEM subjects in the region and will increase the capacity and variety of mathematical outreach activities in the community.  

UoN has recently partnered with the Prince's Trust with the aim of raising aspirations among young people in the local area, increasing their awareness of higher education, and making a positive contribution to the local economy, particularly in the digital sector.


Further initiatives for student access, engagement and success

Student-focused initiatives further illustrate our comprehensive, holistic approach to access and participation. APP-funded projects, such as the Black Industry Connection and Empowerment Programme (BICEP), showcase innovative methods of fostering connections between Black undergraduates and Black alumni mentors.

The Summer School for Rising Researchers offers underrepresented students invaluable opportunities to build essential research skills, form meaningful networks, and receive support for postgraduate study progression. This proactive program promotes the academic growth and continued educational success of students from underrepresented groups by creating a clear pathway for their transition into higher levels of study.

At UoN, we demonstrate our whole-provider approach to access and participation through the establishment of dedicated roles that support the development of targeted strategies related to fostering financial capabilities among the student population. The individuals serving in these capacities directly influence, evaluate, and monitor the priorities outlined in our APP, ensuring a proactive and sustained effort in translating institutional commitment into meaningful actions. Other examples include the work to support care experienced and estranged students. Following our Stand Alone Pledge and National Network for the Education of Care Leavers, (NNECL) accreditation, we have developed our offer of pre-entry support and supplemented our standard financial package with additional support towards first-year accommodation, and a dedicated care experienced and estranged bursary.

Our strategic collaborations with DANCOP (our regional UniConnect partnership) and IntoUniversity, the organisation of Sutton Trust Summer Schools and Pathways, the hosting and membership of the Russell Group’s Advancing Access professional development project for teachers and commitment to the national Realising Opportunities Programme, all showcase our active commitment to meaningful community engagement, forging partnerships, and extending educational opportunities beyond traditional institutional boundaries.


Conclusion

UoN demonstrates a comprehensive and whole-provider approach to access and participation across the institution. Our strategies focus on strong leadership, strategic alignment, community partnerships, inclusive curriculum design, targeted student support services, and data-driven evaluation.

By embedding equality, diversity and inclusion principles throughout education, research, civic engagement, support and wellbeing services, and digital innovation, UoN cultivates an environment where every student can thrive irrespective of background.

Through transparency, accountability, and collaboration across the whole university community, we remain committed to eliminating systemic barriers and advancing equal access, participation, and opportunities for success.

 

Student consultation