Office for Students Regional Access Partnerships Proposal

The Office for Students (OfS) has sought views on how best to create new regional access partnerships that bring together all higher education providers in a region with access and participation plans, to assess the local risks to equality of opportunity and coordinate efforts to address them.

MillionPlus’ members (15 modern universities from across England) are committed to equality of opportunity in access to higher education. This is reflected in their intake, which is disproportionately made up of students from lower participation backgrounds (based on ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and in some cases region of origin) as well as the fact that 60% of graduates from MillionPlus are categorised as ‘Loyals’ – graduates who grew up in a region, attended a university in that region and are still working in that region after graduation.

As such, MillionPlus members have uniquely valuable insights into effective regional collaboration for equality of opportunity in access, as well as a particularly large stake in the effectiveness of any new national model for delivering these collaborations. MillionPlus is therefore pleased to share responses to the questions posed by the OfS as part of their consultation on a proposed new approach to regional access partnerships. These responses are based on discussions with the relevant leads from  member universities as well as previous MillionPlus research.

MillionPlus welcomes any further discussion on these responses and further involvement in the development of OfS’ regional access partnerships proposal.