Improve outreach work using income data, experts say

Using POLAR to measure disadvantage rather than focusing on students’ socio-economic backgrounds risks excluding learners who need support, a widening access charity has warned.

Instead of using Participation of Local areas (POLAR) data—which measures levels of higher education participation by postcode—to assess a student’s level of disadvantage, a national “widening participation cohort” should be set up to measure family income, according to a report by AccessHE.

Such a cohort would be made up of families earning below an agreed income threshold. Data on household income would be collected from pupils until year nine, and then the cohort could be tracked to measure how many go on to enrol in higher education.