Students: Disability
(asked on 10th December 2015) - View Source
Question
To ask the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills, what information his Department holds on satisfaction levels of (a) non-disabled and (b) disabled students of their experience in higher education.
The National Student Survey (NSS) annually gathers students’ opinions on the quality of their course. The Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) published a separate report in 2014 which provides analysis on the differences between NSS results for different student characteristics over the period 2005-2013.
A copy of the report and a tool, which allows the data to be filtered by different student characteristics including disability, are available on the HEFCE website at
http://www.hefce.ac.uk/analysis/nsstrend/
Higher education institutions have a legal duty under the Equality Act 2010 to provide reasonable adjustments for disabled students and to monitor their compliance with their Equality Act duties. The Equality Act 2010 (Specific Duties) Regulations 2011 require institutions to publish information as to their compliance with the general public sector equality duty.
The Independent Office for Fair Access (OFFA) has agreed 183 Access Agreements for 2016/17 with plans for universities to spend more than £745 million on measures to improve access and student success for students from disadvantaged backgrounds, up from £404m in 2009/10. Higher education institutions choose their own access agreement measures and targets, in line with their own particular mission and challenges and these can include targets on disability where appropriate.