What has this recent student experience project, ‘Watch That Gap’, told us about the lives of students with caring responsibilities? And what does it mean for the way we approach support as an institution? Lindsay Jack, Director of the Student Experience at Edinburgh Law School, offers insights into the data and narrative. This post belongs to the Mar-April Hot Topic series: Being student parents/carers↗️.
Has enough work been done to understand the realities faced by students with caring responsibilities? What could a research project focusing on these students tell us?
Lucy Evans wanted to delve into these issues in order to improve the experiences of student parents and student carers. This had arisen as part of the review of Policy for Extensions and Special Circumstances (ESC) but had been highlighted on many occasions by colleagues concerned about support for groups of students with particular circumstances. Student parents and carers were identified broadly as a group more likely to need support for circumstances that are not exceptional one-off occasions covered by ESC or learning adjustments which are part of the work of the Disability and Learning Support Service. Lucy approached Lindsay Jack, in the Law School, to lead this on this research project given her expertise and commitment to work for students.
What has this recent student experience project, ‘Watch That Gap’, told us about the lives of students with caring responsibilities? And what does it mean for the way we approach support as an institution? Let’s talk data, and narrative.
Data: While we have some idea of who our student carers are, as UCAS asks students to declare this, we know we are missing many more. The reasons for this are many, and include students not recognising themselves as carers, and/or perhaps not seeing the value in telling the institution their status. We do not currently collect information on who our student parents are although a recent estimate suggests there could be between 2,000 and 3,000. Until we have a true picture of the data, we cannot get a sense of the scale, but this is a problem in itself and should not represent a barrier to beginning to think about ways to address the issues we identified. It is a complex picture that involves improved communications, a sense of purpose (why would they tell the institution), and trust. The report, when shared will show in detail how all of this ties together.
Narrative: Students with caring responsibilities, whether that be as a carer or with parental or guardianship responsibilities for children (or both) have told us that simple tweaks could make all the difference to their university career. More flexibility built into attendance at classes would transform their time at university. A broader understanding of the limits of their time and the lack of wiggle room would go a long way to underpinning their success too. Being included and considered as part of the way structures and processes are built in the institution would remove the sense they shared of feeling like they had to keep asking for things, and did not know who the correct person was to ask. All of this together affects a student’s sense of belonging and mattering, and by getting it right at each stage of their journey we could completely change, for the better, their time at university.
Of course to think of student identities and characteristics in a vacuum gets us nowhere; all that we learned could apply to other groups of students as well – whether commuters, those working more than a certain number of hours per week, those struggling financially (whose attendance is affected by commuting costs), and many more. And in considering intersectionality we would want to think more broadly about how membership or identity of more of these groups could compound situations for students, as well as other social groupings students identify with. More work is needed to get into these issues; the focus for this project was those with caring responsibilities but it would be remiss not to acknowledge the potential for these experiences to be shared by other students.
‘Watch That Gap’ report includes some concrete recommendations for now and for the future, and the full report contains much more of the rich narrative students and staff who work with students shared with us. We are grateful for their input, and for trusting us with their stories. We hope the outcome of the project pays that back in some way for them and will be looking at how best to take the recommendations forward in discussions with colleagues in the coming weeks.
Lindsay Jack
Lindsay Jack is Edinburgh Law School’s Director of the Student Experience, with expertise in widening participation into legal education and into the legal profession in Scotland. Lindsay’s work engages learners from primary school to secondary school and college, and also spans the whole LLB experience and beyond.
