The new OfS equality of opportunity risk register does a really great job of driving home the sheer scale of the mountain that students who don’t have economic or social capital have to climb to succeed in higher education.
And a genuine hats off to John Blake and his team for structuring it in that way. A systematic breakdown of the bits of the student journey, cross-referenced with the differential experiences of the various students who undertake it, is going to be a much more effective way to generate an action plan than asking for a generalised narrative about access and participation for the various groups.
There’s also fairly solid regulatory coherence between the access/equality and the outcomes/quality work, whatever your reservations about the latter. And what an opportunity for universities to bring together all their various bits of activity – you can imagine the education researchers working on social construction of disability having a fruitful conversation with the widening participation practitioner creating outreach programmes and all of it coming together in a glorious renewal of energy and effort on access and inclusion.