Our Project

We are excited to share that in the 2023-2024 academic year, the Access and Participation Impact team, in collaboration with the Disability Service were successful in a bid to TASO (Transforming Access & Student Outcomes in HE) to collaborate with them, (alongside the University of Birmingham and City College Norwich), to develop an intervention blueprint to support disabled students’ transition into higher education.

Our bid focused on interventions and initiatives targeted specifically at autistic students (those who identify on the autism spectrum).

Phase 1:
A large part of the first phase of the project was to develop an Enhanced Theory of Change (EToC) for our own interventions at Bath, collating evidence and data we have locally that points towards their success. An EToC provides a format for capturing detailed information about inputs, activities, outputs, outcomes and impact. Specifically, it contains information about the activities and mechanisms by which we expect change to happen. It provides an overall snapshot of how we expect an activity, or several activities, to have an impact and to lead to change. More information can be found on the TASO theory of change resources page.

To inform our EToC and contribute to the next phase of the project, we also held a stakeholder workshop, together with interviews and a workshop with ASC students.

Phase 2:
In the second phase, TASO have appointed an independent evaluator (RSM UK Ltd) to create a scalable and adaptable blueprint that can be used more broadly at other institutions across the sector to support better transition into higher education for disabled students.

The project team has collaborated with current students, as well as several teams and departments across the University, including Widening Participation, Data Governance, Centre for Applied Autistic Research (CAAR) and the Disability Action Group (DAG) within The SU to develop our evidence informed EToC and our core recommendations to improve transition at Bath for autistic students. Thank you to everyone who has contributed to this research project.

Further updates

We will update this page with our final report and Enhanced Theory of Change – once they are published by TASO. We will also provide further information for current and prospective students regarding their transition into higher education and information about how we are improving the transition support and programmes we provide for autistic students.

Project Team

Project Lead:

• Jenny Boyle, Access and Participation Impact Manager
  

Project Team:

• Joel Staley, Former Deputy Director, Student Support & Safeguarding (Student Access & Advice)
  
• Katie Masterton, Team Leader - Disability Support
  
• Susan Fielding, Team Leader - Disability Advice
  
• Walid Daffri, Research Assistant