Risk 6: Insufficient academic support

• If a student does not receive the necessary personalised academic support, they may achieve a lower degree attainment than they could have achieved, or they may withdraw from a course.
• Students may also experience poor mental health.
• Students may have less time to devote to non-academic activities than other students.
• These may subsequently further impact on progression rates through to graduate study or to employment.

Students who are:

• prisoners
• from a low household income
• first in family
• disabled
• reporting a mental health condition
• mature
• black students
• Asian
• mixed ethnicity
• other ethnicity
• from Gypsy, Traveller or Roma ethnic groups, or the Boater and Showmen communities
• commuters
• young carers
• from a socio-economic background of 'never worked' or 'long term unemployed'
• from a socio-economic background of 'small employers and own account workers'
• from a socio-economic background of 'routine occupations' or 'semi-routine occupations'
• estranged
• care experienced
• children in need
• parents.

Note that the ordering does not denote a scale or ranking system.

For different groups of students, the impact of these risks that are visible in data might be:

• low continuation and low completion rates
• low on-course attainment rates
• low on-course attainment rates compared with others who are studying the same course
• low NSS results for questions relating to academic support (such as academic support; learning resources; learning community; mental health, assessment and community)
• internal data on academic student support data (such as showing low uptake of academic support coupled with low attainment and/or low continuation rates)
• lower progression rates to further study
• lower progression rates into employment.

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Liz Thomas and Robert Jones (2017), ‘Student engagement in the context of commuter students’, The Student Engagement Partnership, p.34

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Written evidence submitted by Prisoners' Education Trust (2021). (Accessed 12/01/2024)