Minding the gap: Ethnicity, Gender and Degree Attainment Project

1. Minding the gap:Ethnicity, Gender and Degree Attainment Project Opening the conferenceRuth FarwellVice Chancellor Buckinghamshire New University&Chair of project steering group

2. DIUS research showed that there is a difference in the achievement of students from certain minority ethnic groups in terms of final degree attainment even after controlling for the majority of contributory factors. In addition it showed that women are more likely to obtain a higher degree classification than men, except when it comes to attaining a first.

3. The Ethnicity, Gender and Degree Attainment project picked up from the DIUS research and is a provisional survey of the landscape with some very practical suggestions for how the higher education sector might engage with the issues

4. This project is about action planning for institutions and the sector, not about further abstract or abstruse discussion and speculation on causes, or whether the gap does or does not exist.

5. We in institutions should analyse our own data, take the outcomes of the analysis, look at our own practices, question our own practices and consider whether we could do things differently so that all students can benefit to the full from their higher education experience.

6. The possibility that our policy infrastructure and some of our approaches to teaching and learning including assessment may not be enabling some of our students to achieve their full potential is surely something that institutions would wish to discuss and act upon, not withstanding our duties under the equalities legislation.

7. We would not want this report to be an end to the debate but rather we would like it to be a beginning. And this conference is the start.