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A whole provider approach to widening access and student success in higher education

Posted on 30 May 2024

Liz Thomas introduces the work CRESJ has undertaken to develop understanding and practice about a whole provider approach to widening access and student success in higher education.

Between 2023 and 2024, the vast majority of higher education providers in England prepared an Access and Participation Plan (APP). This takes a whole provider approach to assessing and understanding institutional performance, exploring why inequalities exist, setting objectives and targets and developing intervention strategies and evaluation plans. The Centre for Research on Education and Social Justice (CRESJ) has delivered a research-informed programme of support* to taking a whole provider approach (WPA) and has developed a suite of tools to support higher education providers to review and enhance their approach.

In short, a WPA focuses on widening access and student experience interventions across the student lifecycle and operating across the institution, contributing to consistency and equity for all students. A WPA requires staff from departments, services and units from across the institution being involved in widening access and student success, not just ‘professional widening participation’ staff, and ideally for them to work in partnership with students. This is only possible within the context of an ‘enabling environment’ to facilitate institutional transformation. This is illustrated in figure 1. 


Figure 1: Whole provider approach

The enabling environment consists of four dimensions:

  1. Institutional and senior leadership and commitment to diversity and success, which is explicit, clearly communicated and demonstrated.
  2. Institutional policies, organisation and processes (structure) aligned to support widening access and student success, and the co-ordination of work across the higher education provider.
  3. All staff and students understand the institutional commitment, and have the relevant skills, knowledge and support to engage with the agenda, and effective communication facilitates engagement.
  4. Widening access and student success work is underpinned by data, evidence, evaluation and learning.

The following tools are available to support the conceptualisation, review, planning and evaluation of a whole provider approach:

  1. Self-assessment of WPA: (a) Initial reflective questions; (b) More in-depth reflection
  2. Student experience mapping tool
  3. Enabling environment review tool (MS Excel , 52kb) 
  4. WPA template (for writing this section of the APP)
  5. WPA impact evaluation theory of change template
  6. WPA evaluation framework (in development)

Information about the WPA toolkit (MS Word , 3,440kb) and guidance on how to use it is also available.

Additional information