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Widening access and participation

Here's how we support widening access and participation through our products and services.

Analysis and insights associated with progression to post-18 education and training

Using applicant and survey data, UCAS publishes high-impact reports offering insight into students’ progression to their next steps, including the barriers and motivations along the way. These reports cover a broad range of issues, including student decision-making, mental health, apprenticeships, LGBT+, and widening participation.

View UCAS' recent reports

Where next: What influences the choices school leavers make? 

In March 2021, we released our 'Where next' report, which highlighted the impact of qualification and subject choice at school on students’ future pathways, and recommended ways they can be better supported to make fully informed choices at every stage.

Press release and report

Key findings

83% of students choose their degree subject before they choose their preferred university or college, highlighting the importance of subject-focused outreach.

As well as two in five saying more information and advice would have led to them making better choices, almost one in three say they did not receive any information about apprenticeships from their school, showing that more needs to be done to promote parity across these routes.

More than a quarter of students we surveyed would make different GCSE/National 5 choices now they know what their degree course involves – and around a third would choose a different post-16 options.
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Insight into application trends and behaviours

Every year, UCAS publishes an end of cycle report which provides data and narrative reports, helping to describe national trends in applicant behaviour across the four countries of the UK.

End of cycle reports

Good practice and toolkits

To support HE providers with their widening access and participation work, we've developed good practice in collaboration with expert organisations. They give examples of the support and good practice available, offer considerations for providers that may not have a defined package of support in place, and explain how providers can prepare for future changes to application data.

Supporting disadvantaged and under-represented groups

We also provide student-facing information and advice to support under-represented groups applying to higher education:

To help teachers and advisers supporting young people from under-represented backgrounds, we offer some specific tools and resources including:

Outreach Evaluator (STROBE)

Outreach Evaluator (STROBE) is a service developed by UCAS in 2014. It supports the evaluation of widening access and participation activities by taking the personal data that has been supplied and matching it to the UCAS database to trace the progress of the individual. UCAS publishes over two million data points which can be used to support widening access and participation. While the service relies on the input of named data, the output is in an aggregated format. It can be accessed free of charge provided specific criteria are met:

  • The work is for public benefit.
  • The organisation’s finances would be a barrier to them using the paid service.
  • The organisation is happy to have the results shared on ucas.com.

Find out more about Outreach Elevator

Find out how Outreach Elevator works

Contextualised admissions and UCAS' contextual data service

Contextual information and data can be used by universities and colleges to assess an applicant’s achievement and potential in light of their educational and socio-economic background. The aim is to form a more complete picture of an individual applicant’s characteristics.

To support contextualised admissions, we currently offer two contextual data services for providers:

  1. UCAS' contextual data service – offering data and background information about an applicant’s school or college, and local area data in the form of POLAR2, POLAR3, POLAR 4, and the Scottish Index of Multiple Deprivation (SIMD).
  2. Modernised contextualised data service – providing applicant level data and insight into their individual circumstances.

Find out more about contextualised admissions

Self-declared applicant data collected in UCAS Undergraduate application

In addition to standard personal details and qualifications information, UCAS also gives applicants the opportunity to declare additional information — such as an impairment, or experience of the care system. We ask these questions to give contextual information to providers, to identify those applicants who may be eligible for additional support, whatever form that may take (i.e. financial or emotional).

Our work with other organisations

We work with a range of organisations to provide relevant, expert information and advice to different audiences. Organisations we have worked with to support students with specific individual needs include:

  • Carers Trust, which provides examples of university initiatives for students with caring responsibilities
  • the National Association of Disability Practitioners (NADP) – the professional association for disability and inclusivity practitioners in higher and further education. NADP provides codes of practice, peer support, conferences and education events, a legal helpline service, and much more.
  • Stand Alone – the charity for estranged people, which offers an advice portal specifically for young people entering higher education, and a pledge for universities and colleges to show their commitment to supporting these students.
  • Become – the charity for young care leavers in England, which provides information about the support available in higher education for care leavers, via their Propel website.
  • Service Children’s Progression Alliance (SCiP), a partnership of organisations focused on improving outcomes for children from military families, including supporting progression to higher education – read SCiP’s information for HE admissions staff who are supporting service children through the application and transition.

  • The National Union of Students (NUS) is the national voice of students, providing information and advice on all aspects of student life.

  • Student Action for Refugees (STAR) is a national network of student groups working to improve the lives of refugees in the UK. They offer a list of scholarships available to asylum seekers and refugees who want to go to university.

  • Refugee Support Network offers support services to help refugees and asylum seekers overcome any challenges in going to university, and offers useful resources.

UCAS regularly engages with regulators around the UK, including the Office for Students (OfS) in England, the Higher Education Funding Council Wales (HEFCW), and the Scottish Funding Council. The organisations require universities and colleges to outline their plans to support widening access and participation and success in HE. 

UCAS is a member of the following organisations:

  • the Fair Education Alliance (FEA) – a coalition of organisations from across education, charities, and business. Together, the FEA is working to tackle educational inequality, building a fairer education for all by 2022 
  • the National Educational Opportunities Network (NEON) – a professional organisation supporting those involved in widening access to higher education

UCAS also works with organisations to facilitate the evaluation of the impact of their widening access and participation activities. View an example of

to measure impact for students and stakeholders.

If you have any suggestions or feedback on our resources, please email our Policy Team at policy@ucas.ac.uk.

Outreach Evaluator (STROBE)

Make the most of Outreach Evaluator to track groups of individuals into the higher education system using our data. Get evidence of brand awareness, engagement, widening participation and outreach activities.