APP and the Awarding Gaps
Cambridge's awarding gaps
The University's 2020-25 Access and Participation Plan (APP) identified 'awarding gaps' affecting the attainment and continuation rates of particular cohorts of undergraduate students; these are 'gaps' which exist after controlling for a range of variables such as socioeconomic background, prior attainment, etc.
We use the term 'awarding gap' rather than 'attainment gap' to recognise that the issue is an institutional one, rather than a student deficit or capability issue. Recent research (UK Universities 2019) identifies the gap between a student's predicted outcome and eventual attainment as something that develops during a student's course of study: thus the responsibility lies with the institution.
The full set of APP Research Papers 2020 outlining Cambridge's admissions data and degree outcomes is available on the Cambridge Admissions Office website.
Understanding the gaps
For the APP 2020-25, the Cambridge Centre for Teaching & Learning undertook the qualitative research and analysis strand of work to investigate the educational issues that might underlie Cambridge's awarding gaps. For this APP, our focus was on the awarding gaps affecting students with declared mental health conditions and Black British students.
This was realised as the APP Participatory Action Research Project, a student-staff partnership researching and analysing the drivers and intersections behind the gaps.
Addressing the gaps
The University has a collective commitment to address these awarding gaps, and attention is required even where individual course cohort sizes are too small for statistical analysis.
As well as the recommendations which have come out of the APP Participatory Action Research Project (above), the Mind the Gap Toolkit was developed to support staff across the collegiate University in investigating, understanding and addressing awarding gaps. The toolkit includes examples of practice and frequently-asked questions.
Please also see the following papers which came out of the Inclusive Intercollegiate Education project: