New tool benchmarks BME attainment for departments

This summer will see the first practical outcome of UCL's membership of a consortium that has secured HEFCE funding of £500K to increase the number of UCL students from black and minority ethnic (BME) backgrounds who achieve good degrees. 

Being part of the consortium gives UCL access to a new tool, developed by Kingston University, which allows the attainment of BME students on UCL programmes to be benchmarked against data from the sector nationwide. The resulting information will enable programme leaders to identify areas of concern and to make targeted improvements to close the BME attainment gap. 

While departments already have access to data about the attainment details of students grouped by gender, ethnicity, entry tariffs and so on, the new tool enables comparison of attainment on UCL programmes with that across English universities. 

From summer 2017, Academic Services will contact departments with this comparative data and analysis. The package will then be incorporated into the Annual Student Experience Review process. Programme leaders will be invited to series of workshops to explore solutions to issues thrown up by the analysis. A number of resources to support BME attainment are in development, including an inclusive curriculum framework, modelled on one developed by Kingston University, and linked to the UCL Connected Curriculum.

Kingston University, the lead institution of the consortium, has made a programme of changes to its culture and curriculum to successfully combat the BME attainment gap at the institution, which has narrowed from 29 per cent in 2012/13 to 15 per cent in 2015/16.  As a member of the consortium, UCL will be able to access many of the tools and initiatives Kingston has developed to tackle this issue.