Leeds Metropolitan University - Improving the degree attainment of Black and minority ethnic students

Enhancing BME student success through staff-student collaboration

The aim is to develop an university-wide action plan to enhance BME student degree attainment; to have commitment to the implementation of this plan at strategic and operational levels; to have piloted a BME peer mentoring scheme; and for the university to have adopted improvements in BME degree attainment as a Key Performance Indicator.

This project is designed to reduce the gap between the degree attainment of White and BME students focussing primarily on students undertaking ‘professional’ courses such as Law, Social Work and Accountancy. We will work with a small group of BME student researchers to explore qualitatively BME students’ rationales for undertaking their respective courses, how they imagine their future ‘possible selves’, their understanding of the labour market they intend to enter and their experiences of issues around equality and discrimination. We will deliver a series of short research training sessions with the student researchers, followed by a focus group designed to identify key research questions. A series of focus groups and in-depth interviews with BME students will follow culminating in a student and staff focus group analysing and exploring findings from the research. This will feed into the development of a clear action plan to improve degree attainment for BME students. By the end of the project we will have:

• Produced a literature review and final project report
• Written a series of vignettes describing the different social and academic experiences of BME students and the futures they envisage
• Produced a report to be presented to the Vice-Chancellor, Governors and Senior Executive Team and to Academic Board and Academic Committee and, through these, to all academic and support staff across the university
• Piloted a BME student peer mentoring scheme in one faculty and looked for continuation funding to roll this out across the university
• Evaluated our ALT strategy and annual ALT priorities in the light of our findings and suggested changes which could be incorporated
• Updated our Race Equality Plan
• Incorporated specific actions into our WP Strategic Assessment
• Delivered a one day Workshop (in May 2011) highlighting changes which have taken place since the end of the project and disseminating impact of the mentoring scheme.

Three years from the end of the project the impact of our work will be measured by:

• The university having adopted improvements in BME degree attainment as a Key Performance Indicator
• Changes to curricula and assessment practices designed to increase BME graduate attainment
• An increase in higher level degree classifications for BME students.

Team members 

Jacqueline Stevenson (Principal Researcher)j.stevenson@leedsmet.ac.uk

Professor Hilary Sommerlad (Professor, Director Centre for Research into Diversity in the Professions) H.Sommerlad@leedsmet.ac.uk

Sue North (Equality and Diversity Manager) S.U.North@leedsmet.ac.uk

Professor Harinder Bahra (Visiting Professor of Management and Diversity) H.Bahra@leedsmet.ac.uk