Originally published here.
The Higher Education attainment gap between BAME students and their White peers is well documented. The cause of this gap is multifactorial, and there is a need to understand contributing factors to support the design of meaningful interventions. This study aimed to probe student and staff understanding of what contributes to the attainment gap and to collect feedback on how to reduce it. Qualitative data were collected from 110 STEM students (95% BAME and 75% female) and 20 staff (70% BAME and 80% female) from Universities in the West Midlands and London via one-to-one interviews and focus groups. Questions were developed across themes of support, inclusivity, and development.
Transcripts were subjected to inductive and deductive thematic analysis. Key findings included: the need for cultural awareness and representation within student support services and pastoral care provision and tailored support for students who were the first in their families to attend university. Students also felt the academic staff disproportionally represent their backgrounds, leading to a sense of not belonging amongst BAME students. BAME staff felt like tokens for diversity and reported having higher workloads than White staff, the social drinking culture felt isolating, participants felt that all staff should engage with cultural/religious training and diversity of academic staff should be improved through inclusive recruitment practices and mentoring. The results highlight the need for access to academic and pastoral support that is culturally sensitive to all backgrounds.
Existing literature uses a variety of terms to address the issue of academic disparity. Most notably, terms like the learning gap, which refers to student outputs, the diļ¬erence in the relative performance of students in comparison to their expected performance and, the opportunity gap which refers to student inputs—the inequitable distribution of resources and opportunities. Unequivocally, the two terms are interwoven and are not typically isolated or passing events, but observable and predictable trends that remain relatively stable and enduring over time. Educational performance and attainment disparities may appear in a wide variety of data sets, including but not limited to, university admission, absenteeism, dropout, and completion rates (Dualeh, 2017;Universities UK, and NUS, 2019). However, the most discussed is the attainment gap, and at the heart of the discussion is the BAME group who are at the receiving end of the discrimination.
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