From local to institutional attainment change: scaling-up local initiatives

Abstract

Ethnicity-based gaps in degree outcomes are a pervasive sector issue. At the University of Wolverhampton, substantial investments have been made a) to fund research into why the outcomes gap occurs, the better to understand it, and then b) to implement and evaluate initiatives to reduce it. However, upscaling smaller initiatives to university-wide actions can be fraught with issues. This case study will provide a synthesis of the research carried out at Wolverhampton and the ways this was used as an evidence-base to inform institutional change. The study will also consider some of the lessons learnt from our attempts to embed the outcomes into institutional business as usual.