COVID-lockdown in English higher education March–June 2020. Were disabled students’ needs forgotten?

ABSTRACT

The COVID-19 pandemic forced HE Providers (HEPs) to radically transition traditional teaching and assessment to 100% remote delivery. UK Governments’ policies widening HE participation have yielded a significant minority of disabled students (15%). This study investigated English HEPs (n = 133) transition advice to academics regarding these students’ needs. Of 104 respondents, 16% provided new advice regarding remote teaching for disabled students, 22% regarding remote assessment; only 2 mentioned they had conducted Equality Impact Assessments (EIAs) about the changes. Disabled students’ needs appear forgotten. Four response models were identified: Keep Calm and Carry On, Meet an Existential Threat, All Hands to the Pumps, An Opportunity for Change. Emergent good practice examples are given. Most English HEPs should urgently conduct EIAs under their legal Anticipatory Public Sector Equality Duty. The whole sector needs to better institutionalise delivering to disabled students’ needs through effective inclusivity policy implementation, and educating academics and academic management.

KEYWORDS:

• Access and participation
• equality and diversity
• HE policy
• staff development
• student experience
• teaching and learning

Acknowledgements

Some of the results of this study were presented in a short, pre-recorded presentation given to the National Association of Disabilities Practitioners Virtual Conference June 2021.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 Equity Group – a useful generic term, originally coined by Judge Silberman Abella (1984) who led Canada’s Royal Commission on Equality in Employment, to identify the needs of groups which she saw as experiencing inequitable treatment and for whose benefit future legislation to outlaw such practice should be passed.

2 POLAR – Participation Of Local AReas classification groups areas across the UK based on the proportion of young people who participate in higher education

3 Social model of disability: ‘ … .disability is not something medical to be treated but rather a failing on the part of society … a response to disability is not about ‘fixing’ the individual, but rather about restructuring the environments and attitudes around them’ (Office for Students (OfS) 2019; Oliver 1990)

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ivan Newman

Dr Ivan Newman BSc (Hons), MBA, C Eng, Eur Ing, CITP, PG Cert, PG Dip, MA, PhD is an independent Specialist Study Skills tutor at Higher Education level and a qualified Diagnostic Assessor for Specific Learning Difficulties/Differences (SpLDs). His doctoral thesis examined English HE educational policy regarding the interplay between the 2016/17 Modernisation of Disabled Students’ Allowances and inclusive teaching and learning. He has published and presented extensively in the field. He specialises in supporting Masters and Doctoral students. Long familial exposure to SpLDs and other learning differences inform his practice. Prior to entering HE his work encompassed business management, change and project management, and business process engineering for international companies. His original discipline was Physics and Computing. Ivan’s PhD thesis is available from: http://eprints.glos.ac.uk/9170/