Understanding fairness and meeting competence standards

1. Understanding fairness and meeting competence standards Through reasonable adjustments and curriculum design and pedagogy Barbara Waters

2. UK research ‘understanding the interaction of competence standards and reasonable adjustments’ in higher education • Sponsored by the Equality Challenge Unit, research in final stages at May 2014 • Researchers Barbara Waters and Liz Maudslay • Advisory Committee from UK institutions • Outcome - a guidance document to aid understanding of the principles behind setting and assessing competence standards

3. Who the guidance is for • Those involved in drawing up competence standards eg Heads of Academic Departments/Faculties • Subject specialists eg Course leaders • Disability advisers • Staff involved in admissions • Those providing information for students eg student course handbooks, web prospectuses

4. Approach to the guidance • Integrate with other work academics are currently engaged in, for example, implementing the new QAA Quality Code including previous code for disabled students • But recognising the changing context for disabled students and staff • Not a bolt-on for disabled students • Dealing with the ‘not disability again’ factor

5. The changing context • Growth in numbers of disabled students (doubling numbers between 2003/04 and 2011/12) • Equality Act 2010 • Greater complexity of impairments, noted growth in disclosure of mental health issues and autistic spectrum • QAA Quality Code for Higher Education Institutions 2013 - new approach to quality standards, embedding equality expectations • Moving towards Universal Design

6. Research base • Face to face interviews involving 16 UK Higher Education Institutions on Nursing and Teaching • Individual meetings with agencies and specialist groups and organisations • Questionnaires to subject specialists in French and Spanish and Geography, Environmental and Earth Sciences (GEES) • Literature review

7. Legal definitions Disability Discrimination Acts, followed by the Equality Act 2010 • Sets out expectations of HEIs – the anticipatory duty for the student body • Requires individual reasonable adjustments/accommodations to be made to avoid disability discrimination • Defines competence standards

8. Defining a competence standard • ‘an academic, medical or other standard applied by or on behalf of an education provider or qualifications body for the purposes of determining whether or not a person has a particular level of competence or ability • must apply to all students • must be genuine and objectively justified ie fair • must be relevant to particular course • must not lead to direct discrimination

9. Competence standards Legislation states that competence standards are not subject to reasonable accommodations In HE courses, competence standards can be described as • subject knowledge and understanding • skills, abilities and attributes Often expressed as learning outcomes Course materials should set out: • The intended learning outcomes to achieve the purpose of the study programme, including external professional requirements, which cannot be changed • The methods of assessment by which students demonstrate achievement of the learning outcomes including work placements or fieldwork, which can usually be adjusted by accommodations

10. Impact on quality More flexible and inclusive means of assessment benefit all students not just disabled students QAA quality code for higher education states: Reflecting the needs of students with different protective characteristics in the design and approval of programmes reduces likelihood of making one-off modifications to assessment in a reactive manner. Reliance on one reactive modifications can be place both students and staff under additional pressures and may lead to inequities QAA code B6 2013

11. Emerging issues 1 Prompting the team who develop and design course programmes to: • understand more about the course requirements in relation to the competence standards legal requirements • Develop a wide range of experiences and practice on inclusive design and review over reliance on some generic reasonable adjustments - and share them • Improve student information on course requirements/learning outcomes and competence standards to inform course choice

12. Emerging issues 2 • Understanding the power of inclusive design and embedding it in quality • Communicating inclusive design developments to disabled students who have only experienced individual adjustments • Evaluating the progression and achievement of disabled students to inform future course development • Developing supporting procedures for staff and students when difficult decisions need to be made, for example Fitness to Study policies

13. Potential to use a wider partnership approach to programme design • The departmental disability representative • Team and subject leaders • Disability services staff Developing team work in order to • Draw up competence standards • Review existing programmes • Evaluate equality aspects of new courses • Make decisions on method of assessment • Communicate these to prospective students

14. What is the team’s task regarding course competence standards ? Designing the course programme content and academic standards/learning outcomes all students must meet Deciding on the assessment element of the programme • Identify the competence standard being assessed by a particular assessment • Does the assessment genuinely reflect this standard? • Is the assessment method and the particular standard made clear to students? How? • Does the form of assessment being considered present a particular barrier to disabled students? • Could the method of assessment be more inclusive? Evaluating year by year results relating to disabled students

15. Assessment on work placements • Method and purpose of assessment should be identified in course programme guide, including how students can demonstrate achievement of competence standard of external professional bodies • A range of methods, similar to university based study • Maximum flexibility but must show can independently meet the standards – the job must be done • Culture of placements may need negotiation

16. Culture of placements Unused to student reliance on technology • For example, student nurses using smart phones to access notes leads to concerns about patients’ misunderstanding • Creating immediate notes using hospital IT systems which have a ‘time out’ feature Requirement for handwritten notes in some nursing settings could be a standard

17. Making good choices • Staff concerned that students, including disabled students, are not being prepared for the modern work place, which are target driven, are busy and noisy and change is constant • It’s important students receive much more guidance on the demands of a course before enrolling, including assessed placements which might be 50% of the course; timetabling of fieldwork • volunteering experience may not be enough as volunteers are sheltered

18. Specific subject areas the research looked at • Nursing • Teaching • French and Spanish language • Geography, Environmental and Earth Sciences (GEES)

19. Nursing and Teaching professional considerations • Assessed placements are 50% or more of the course and students must pass all placements • Supporting students with more complex needs to meet course competencies and professional standards • Development of ‘inclusion plans’ to share with placement mentors who may have less experience in disability support • Student support available from home institution, eg skype, evening drop in sessions • Joint risk assessments on placements • Travel to work placement time and expense

20. In nursing Successful flexible adjustments have made to achieve course competancies and professional competence standards • Breaking night duty into smaller components • Use of recording equipments for taking a patient’s history or handover procedures • Use of smart phones with dedicated apps • In clinical tasks, electronic stethoscopes, amplified telephones, radio aids for deaf students, lifting procedures

21. In teaching Despite advances in access to buildings and inclusive teaching practice the matching of school placement and individual student needs to be individually tailored Some examples of adjustments included: • Students with mobility impairments having changes to the location and layout of classrooms • Students with fatigue issues have rest periods using flexible timetabling or shorter days

22. Foreign languages Staff identified a range of university based adjustments, mostly for students with sensory impairments and achieving learning outcomes through appropriate recorded and live language resources Main concerns were the placement abroad • Understanding where the year abroad fits into the learning outcomes and how students demonstrate their learning - its not compulsory so the competence can be demonstrated in a different way, but this would be very unusual • Unwillingness to disclose disability to hosts • Reasonable adjustments requested not being provided

23. GEES • Early discussion of student needs at admissions, particularly related to fieldwork which can start in the first term • Students may underestimate the impact of the impairment • Fieldwork learning outcomes may be met by alternatives but it depends on the course components and would be very unusual • A range of successful accommodations to field work have been developed and are being shared through a new publication by the Higher Education Academy on accessible fieldwork in May 2014

24. Impact on disabled students of moving to an inclusive approach • Challenging for students (and staff) • Students used to certain accommodations, for example extra time to complete assessments • May experience feelings of their needs being sidelined and being unsupported

25. Procedures to support students and staff when a student experiences difficulties HEIs were keen to develop a fair and consistent approach to students unable to meet the expectations of the learning programme • Fitness to Study policies which focus on student progress and include steps to support, not discipline the student including an agreed action plan • Fitness to Practise committees deal with professional standards • Exit awards/qualifications and - credits

26. Evaluating the impact on disabled students • Assess if the anticipatory and individual reasonable adjustments are fit for purpose and sufficiently resourced through student progression data • Gather anonymised progress reports on the number, range and effectiveness of reasonable adjustments implemented for students, with examples, and share • Seek feedback from disabled students to identify improvements for the future

27. Conducting the evaluation • Gather feedback from students in a range of formal and informal ways • Inform students of the inclusive learning approach and how this is being implemented in programme design and delivery - recognising that in the past all the information has been about individual reasonable adjustments • create ongoing forums for communication

28. What next? • Final review of research and guidance and final decisions on recommendations May/June 2014 • Guidance publications available from Equality Challenge Unit, UK in September 2014 www.ecu.ac.uk • Individual subjects briefings aimed at stimulating discussions between academic departments and disability services with regard to embedding equalities approaches to programme design and delivery and consider the changing roles within inclusive design