Building a regulatory environment for really widening participation
Richard Davies, University of Hertfordshire

This paper is founded on two assumptions underpinning the political aspiration of widening participation. The first is that education is a positional good that impacts an individual’s life chances and experiences, as well as those of their direct family and community. Education and higher education, therefore, are of significant value and concern. The second is that higher education ought to be accessible to those who would benefit from the experiences and chances it affords. Those, that is, who can successfully engage with the education it provides and achieve the credentials it offers. This focuses attention on future rather than past achievement. Higher education is not primarily a ‘prize’ for those who have been successful in prior high-stakes examinations, but, for some people, a pathway to a valuable and personally valued form of life.

In this paper, I focus specifically on the design of the Office for Students’ Equality of Opportunity Risk Register (EORR) and its B conditions of registration. I argue that these need to be significantly amended to incentivise effective widening participation in higher education. Underpinning the analysis is Fishkin’s (2014) account of ‘opportunity pluralism’, which questions the meaning of dessert in these educational contexts. With inherently unequal experiences and opportunities to succeed educationally, alongside high-stakes examinations, the system is geared towards the reproduction of advantage. This inequality is not disrupted by naïve models of equality of opportunity, such as the EORR, which bake in advantage. The implication of opportunity pluralism is that, if we value opportunity, we need a variety of routes through (and bypassing) higher education. However, the B conditions make such pluralism extremely unattractive, if not impossible, for higher education providers. Both the EORR and the B conditions, therefore, require substantial change.

In conclusion, I offer some suggestions as to how the OfS might go about achieving its stated (political) aspirations.

Richard Davies is Programme Leader for the MA Education Framework in the School of Education at the University of Hertfordshire, with a career spanning several roles in higher education research, evaluation, and academic development across the UK. Trained as a philosopher of education, he brings an analytic and critical perspective to long-term questions of policy, governance, and institutional change in higher education. His work focuses on how universities can respond intelligently to emerging pressures—including technological change, post-truth environments, interdisciplinarity, and shifting expectations of evidence and impact—without losing sight of their educational purpose. He has particular expertise in evaluation and strategic enhancement, with an emphasis on approaches that support thoughtful innovation rather than short-term compliance. He is especially concerned with how the sector can develop forms of leadership, research use, and educational design that are resilient in times of uncertainty and capable of sustaining academic values in a rapidly changing policy and technological landscape.

Enquiries to dpm50@cam.ac.uk