Rebecca Curran-Scarlett, Senior Policy & Information Officer at Lead Scotland shares the lived experience of disabled people in the university admissions process and why the Guarantee of Fairness and Guide for Disabled learners is so important in their application journey to university.
In 2019, we launched a campaign to make access to university fairer for disabled people. After years of taking calls on our Disabled Students’ Helpline about the fairness of the admissions process, we decided to take action to try and influence change.
We were receiving calls from young disabled people planning their next steps after school and thinking about university. Many of these young people were concerned about the transition and how to navigate the admissions process as a disabled applicant. For example, should they tell the university they were disabled? If they did, how would that information be used? Were they going to be discriminated against – not wanted even, because they had some kind of ‘deficit’? And would the university be able to support them in the same way their school had?
Our callers also voiced concerns about the adverse circumstances they faced when they were sitting their final school exams. Some callers told us they had to wait a long time to get a proper diagnosis, so the support they received was delayed. Some callers told us the support they got was inadequate or had to be fought for. Other callers told us the support just wasn’t there, so they had to be home schooled. If these callers faced all this disadvantage at school, had they been given the best chance to reach their potential? Were their final marks truly reflective of their learning level? And if not, what did that mean for them when looking at the tariffs being asked of them to get onto their chosen course?
And then there were callers telling us they’d had to take a break to their senior school years as they were just too unwell to be there. Some of them faced having to study during long term hospital stays.
And when these young disabled people did finish school, it wasn’t always possible for them to go straight into university. Issues like getting lower marks than predicted, a lack of remote learning options and the requirement to remain in their hometown to access a support package were just some of the barriers they told us about.
We were aware at the time there were some excellent initiatives in place to support young people from care experienced and deprived backgrounds to get into university, but there seemed to be a gap when it came to disabled applicants. While there were explicit statements on university websites encouraging these students to apply and initiatives in place to improve their chances of getting a place, it was unclear where disabled applicants sat amongst the backdrop of these widening access policies.
So, in 2019 we launched our campaign, foregrounding the story of our helpline caller Suley, and her long journey to university. We were delighted to be invited to work with Universities Scotland as a result of this work, and together with Suley, we supported the sector to develop a statement and set of shared principles for universities to commit to along with a new guide to support disabled applicants through the admissions process. We hope talented disabled people will read the statement and principles and believe university is for them, they are wanted, and they have so much to offer. We hope they will feel reassured they will never be discriminated against in the admissions process and that they feel more confident in what support they can get and where to get that support.
So are we fair yet? Time will tell, but we are feeling hopeful.