Common use of Targets and Milestones Clause in Contracts

Targets and Milestones. Summary Over the period covered by this Access Agreement the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment We will enhance our capacity to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our activities to ensure an evidence based approach to future investment Over the period covered by this Access Agreement the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment. We have set the following targets, in collaboration with the Students’ Union, to promote the inclusion of under-represented in higher education: Students from state schools: 5% above LAB Students from low participation neighbourhoods: marginally exceed the LAB Students from lower socio-economic groups (N-SEC 4-7): marginally exceed the LAB Students from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds: Improve from 10.5% to 13.5% Students in receipt of DSA: meet or exceed LAB It should be noted that when setting milestones there are a number of contextual factors that create additional challenges. 75% of the current home students the University recruits come from locations that are no more than two counties away from Hampshire, for example Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, East Sussex, Somerset, Surrey, West Sussex, Wiltshire. The impact of recruiting from these relatively affluent areas can be seen in the University’s performance in the HESA Performance Indicator for entrants from SEC backgrounds 4-7 and low participation neighbourhoods. We have therefore set what we believe to be a stretching target for both of these indicators. Annual milestones have been set for these targets (Annexe B, Table 5a refers). These will be monitored on an annual basis and reported by the University Executive Group and University Council in our WP Strategic Assessment.

Targets and Milestones. Summary Over The IOE student population is highly diverse for a predominantly postgraduate institution. Compared to the sector, in 2009-10 the IOE had a high proportion of female students (74% compared to 56% nationally), as well as a higher than national average proportion of BME students across the full student cohort (23% compared to 20%). Specifically in relation to our Foundation Degrees, the Institute has identified the following performance targets: BME students - recruitment The IOEs performance in terms of recruiting BME students to the Foundation Degrees appears to be ahead of national trends for full time “other undergraduate programmes” (OUG, as defined by HESA) by some margin. In 2009-10, HESA data for the sector shows that some 18% of full time other undergraduates were from black and minority ethnic groups. In the same year, the proportion of black and minority ethnic students undertaking the two foundation degrees at the IOE was 39%. Early data for 2010-11 shows a slight decline on this figure (at 32%). It is recognised however that the performance here may be skewed by the Institute's location (in London). Nonetheless, we remain committed to ensuring that our student cohort remains highly diverse and will seek to retain this performance across the five year period. Specifically, our target is to retain our performance at 60% higher than HESA sector actuals for OUG students. BME students - retention/completion We have recognised however that completion rates on the Foundation Degree programmes vary between BME and non-BME students. The programmes are relatively new, and thus forming a trend baseline is not yet possible, but in 2009-10 some 27% of the eligible cohort of BME students successfully completed their programme within the expected period of study, compared to 34% for non-BME students. We will therefore aim to ensure that completion rates are equitable across the expected period of study of two years, for all students, reviewing this target annually as performance improves. Where students are unable to complete within two years, we will ensure that opportunities to progress to a third year of study are available, rather than allowing the enrolment to lapse. Disabled students - recruitment Although our conversion from Foundation Degree applications to enrolments for students with disabilities compares favourably to students without disabilities (80% conversion, compared to 55% conversion), the proportion of students with disabilities on the foundation degrees dropped from 15% in 2008-09 to 7% in 2009-10 which was below the sector average for comparable programmes in the Education cost centre according to HESA data for the year. This is likely to be a feature of the professional nature of the programmes, with participants already in employment settings. Nonetheless, we will work with Local Authorities to ensure that students with disabilities are proactively encouraged to participate in the programme and set ourselves a target of 10% of the foundation degree cohort to comprise of students declaring a disability by the end of the period covered by this the Access Agreement Agreement. Disabled students - retention/completion Completion rates of students with disabilities in 2009-10 compared favourably with the University will focus its activities percentage of other students successfully completing the Foundation Degrees (33%, compared to address areas where 27% of students completed within the expected two year period, the remainder continuing to a third year of study). This is likely to be the result of the dedicated support we provide from the point of application, to ensure conversion to full enrolment, through to the level of continued support we provide for disabled student across all programmes of study at the Institute. We seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment We will enhance our capacity to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our activities to ensure an evidence based approach to future investment Over a steady state across the period covered by this the Access Agreement with sustained investment in this area. Progression to further study In our previous Access Agreement, a target was set for 20% of Foundation Degree students to go on to further study at the University will focus its activities IOE by 2010-11. Of the 2009-10 completers, 68% have progressed to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environmentstudy on the B.Ed top up route. We have set intend to secure this level of conversion and steadily increase it over the following targets, in collaboration period covered by our access agreement with the Students’ Union, to promote the inclusion a target of under80% by 2015-represented in higher education: Students from state schools: 5% above LAB Students from low participation neighbourhoods: marginally exceed the LAB Students from lower socio-economic groups (N-SEC 4-7): marginally exceed the LAB Students from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds: Improve from 10.5% to 13.5% Students in receipt of DSA: meet or exceed LAB It should be noted that when setting milestones there are a number of contextual factors that create additional challenges. 75% of the current home students the University recruits come from locations that are no more than two counties away from Hampshire, for example Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, East Sussex, Somerset, Surrey, West Sussex, Wiltshire. The impact of recruiting from these relatively affluent areas can be seen in the University’s performance in the HESA Performance Indicator for entrants from SEC backgrounds 4-7 and low participation neighbourhoods. We have therefore set what we believe to be a stretching target for both of these indicators. Annual milestones have been set for these targets (Annexe B, Table 5a refers). These will be monitored on an annual basis and reported by the University Executive Group and University Council in our WP Strategic Assessment16.

Targets and Milestones. Summary Over Detailed targets and milestones are set out at the period covered by end of this Access Agreement Agreement. The University firmly believes that a wide range of different widening participation indicators needs to be used in order to accurately assess the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance complex nature of the issues in what will be an untested environment We will enhance our capacity to monitor ensuring access and evaluate the effectiveness of our activities to ensure an evidence based approach to future investment Over the period covered by this Access Agreement the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment. We have set the following targets, in collaboration with the Students’ Union, to promote the inclusion of success for under-represented in higher education: Students from state schools: 5% above LAB Students from low participation neighbourhoods: marginally exceed the LAB Students from lower socio-economic groups (N-SEC 4-7): marginally exceed the LAB Students from Black groups. As such we have selected 10 different targets and Minority Ethnic backgrounds: Improve from 10.5% to 13.5% Students in receipt of DSA: meet or exceed LAB It should be noted that when setting milestones there are a number of contextual factors that create additional challenges. 75% of the current home students the University recruits come from locations that are no more than two counties away from Hampshire, for example Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, East Sussex, Somerset, Surrey, West Sussex, Wiltshire. The impact of recruiting from these relatively affluent areas can be seen in the University’s performance in the HESA Performance Indicator for entrants from SEC backgrounds 4-7 and low participation neighbourhoods. We have therefore set what we believe to be a stretching target for both of these indicatorsincluded in our access agreements. Annual milestones have been set for these targets (Annexe B, Table 5a refers). These will be monitored In order to monitor our progress consistently on an annual basis and reported to be able to benchmark our performance against other institutions in the sector we are heavily reliant upon using the HESA widening participation performance indicators. We would welcome the development in the sector of additional robust and standardised measures, which might perhaps emerge as part of OFFA and HEFCE’s work on developing the National Strategy for Access and Student Success. Our targets are under constant review and are considered regularly at the University level by both our Recruitment and Admissions Committee (RAC) and our Student Retention Improvement Team (SRIT) and also at the academic School and Faculty level through their Academic Boards and Management Groups. The majority of the ten targets we have chosen to set are based on the HESA widening participation performance indicators and benchmarks and include those on state schools, NS-SEC classes 4-7, low participation neighbourhoods, non-continuation and disabled students. The remainder relate to increased enrolments of other specific under-represented groups of students, including care leavers and Compact Plus students. Progress against targets will be monitored through the university’s outreach evaluation strategy (detailed in section 4 below). The University of Brighton has a strong track record in performance on a number of the widening participation performance indicators and the targets and milestones set out in this Access Agreement aim either to maintain our good performance (e.g. entrants from state schools and students in receipt of DSA), improve absolute performance (e.g. LPN) or to improve performance in both absolute and relative terms (e.g. NS-SEC and non-continuation) (see also section 2 – our access and student success measures). The Student Equalities Report 2012 (January 2013), details of which are in section 5 below, demonstrates that we have also continued to achieve good outcomes for students with disabilities in terms of recruitment and admissions, retention and progression. There have been specific interventions put in place by the disability team to ensure students are aware of services and receive support early on in their learning programme. The same report also shows that the university has achieved good outcomes for mature student admissions, progression and satisfaction, although mature student retention may provide an area for further targeted intervention. Three targets have been set with regard to achieving improvements in non-continuation rates to reflect the increased and additional efforts in this area. Two are based on the HESA performance indicators (full-time first degree entrants and young full-time first degree entrants from low participation neighbourhoods), the other is based on internal data, which analyses non-continuation rates by NS-SEC. The latest HESA PI data published in 2013 show significant improvements on both these measures and that our milestones have been exceeded. Our latest internal student retention data analysis also highlights these improvements and shows a reduction in the gap between non- continuation rates of entrants from NS-SEC groups 4-7 and 1-3. We have consistently performed well against our existing outreach targets and, as outlined in section 2a above, have used the evaluative evidence from previous outreach activity to set targets for 2014-15. Although we have not made significant changes to the targets which we consider to be sufficiently stretching, we have updated them in consideration of the development of additional outreach activity laid out elsewhere in the access agreement – notably the sustained, targeted activities delivered via Compact Plus and our collaborative work. Firstly, we acknowledge a difference between our general recruitment outreach work in Sussex delivered through the University Executive Group of Brighton Compact, which we will continue to undertake, and our targeted widening access outreach work delivered through the Compact Plus programmes. We will retain our secondary and post-16 general outreach targets, but have added targets around the number of participants we plan to attract to our programme of sustained activities for both pre- and post-16 pupils and students. We have included a number of targets based on data from the HEAT database which provide us with an interim, transitional baseline as there are still a great number of former Aimhigher participants still in the system. We will monitor these numbers closely as we move away from the end of the Aimhigher programme and towards fully developed University Council of Brighton Compact Plus cohorts. We anticipate that there may be considerable changes which could influence future targets. The number of schools we plan to work with will remain the same, as this represents all the schools in Sussex we have identified as needing the most support. We will revisit these targets as we expand our WP Strategic Assessmentoutreach activity into other geographical areas (e.g. Kent). We anticipate that targets specifically around the outreach contribution of individual academic Schools will be included in future access agreements, as we implement a greater amount of subject- specific outreach activity delivered by academic departments, based on the new work currently being developed and coordinated through the new Widening Participation Outreach Operation Group. Additionally we are underpinning the importance of the collaborative activities we are developing with UCL and Cambridge University by including targets around this work. As collaboration is such an important aspect of equipping learners to make the right decisions for their progression, we shall continually review our efforts in this area, and add to these as necessary.

Targets and Milestones. Summary Over the period covered by this Access Agreement the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment We will enhance our capacity to monitor and evaluate the effectiveness of our activities to ensure an evidence based approach to future investment Over the period covered by this Access Agreement the University will focus its activities to address areas where we seek to maintain or improve performance in what will be an untested environment. We have set the following targets, in collaboration with the Students’ UnionXXXX, to promote the inclusion of the under-represented in higher education: Students from state schools: 5% 5 per cent above LAB Students from low participation neighbourhoods: marginally exceed the LAB Students from lower socio-economic groups (N-SEC 4-7): marginally exceed the LAB Students from Black black and Minority Ethnic minority ethnic backgrounds: Improve improve from 10.5% 10.5 per cent to 13.5% 13.5 per cent Students in receipt of DSA: meet or exceed LAB It should be noted that when setting milestones there are a number of contextual factors that create additional challenges. 75% 75 per cent of the current home students the University recruits come from locations that are no more than two counties away from Hampshire, for example Berkshire, Dorset, Devon, East Sussex, Somerset, Surrey, West Sussex, Sussex and Wiltshire. The impact of recruiting from these relatively affluent areas can be seen in the University’s performance in the HESA Performance Indicator for entrants from SEC backgrounds 4-7 and low participation neighbourhoods. We have therefore set what we believe to be a stretching target for both of these indicators. Annual milestones have been set for these targets (Annexe B, Table table 5a refers). These will be monitored on an annual basis and reported by the University Executive Group and University Council in our WP Widening Participation Strategic Assessment.