Higher Education: Disabled Students

Lord Low of Dalston Excerpts

Monday 18th January 2016 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

The noble Lord will be aware that higher education institutions already have a duty to make reasonable adjustments for disabled students under the Equality Act 2010. We are working hard with organisations to make sure that not only do they share best practice but also, importantly, to enable us to identify a baseline which disabled students can expect as a minimum level of provision in the duties that will be moved over to higher education institutions from this September.

[Lord Low of Dalston (CB)]

My Lords, a Which? report produced last October found that higher education institutions are falling short in providing information on course design, choice and assessment, as required by law. This suggests that the expectations of BIS about its ability to transfer its responsibilities for disabled students to higher education institutions are not realistic, and that students will be severely disadvantaged and left to implement the Equality Act provisions on an individual basis. In order to hold higher education institutions effectively to account for their performance, would it not make sense for them to be required to report annually on their support for disabled students, and for those reports to be monitored and in turn reported on by the Office for Fair Access in its annual report?

[Baroness Evans of Bowes Park]

I thank the noble Lord for his question. As I have said, BIS officials are working hard with universities and organisations to make sure that disabled students receive the level of support they need. We are certainly going to be encouraging providers to publish data on their provision for disabled students. We have seen an increase in the number of disabled students accessing higher education, a trend that we are very proud of and want to see continue. We are determined to work with higher education institutions to make sure that disabled students continue to get the level of support they need.