Inclusive Processes & Systems

It is important for departments - perhaps especially those with practical elements to their courses - to ensure that disabled students are appropriately supported to achieve as well as their non-disabled peers. This is not only in assessments, but throughout the course of their studies, in terms of ensuring all teaching sessions are inclusive and accessible. Whilst reasonable adjustments for assessments are handled by Disability Services, reasonable adjustments for practicals need more departmental intervention, due to the specialist nature of the lab sessions.

This project sought to tackle this issue, by producing guidance for academic staff to support them in supporting disabled students in practical sessions. For example, the guidance deals with the fact that many first-year students are put off contacting their department proactively regarding reasonable adjustments in labs - potentially due to the fact that many will not know what the laboratory environment looks like, and what challenges they may face in adapting to this environment. As such, departments (particularly in those with big cohorts of students) might want to consider creating pre-arrival video resources for students, showing them where the laboratory is, what the environment looks like, what will happen on the first day of laboratories, and what types of reasonable adjustments are available in the department. This will help the students putting their needs into the right context and engaging with any consultation.

This guidance document for departments is still in review, and will be circulated to the wider community as a next step. For more information about this guidance, please contact .

The team worked with groups of staff on how best to support the role through training and development and recognition, reward and workload, with these sub-committees providing a list of recommendations to work towards.

Generally, it was found that the view of students and staff is that the system is not broken, but there are aspects of the experience which could be improved​. This supported the findings of the review group that wholescale changes to the title of the role, and model of personal tutoring, would not be appropriate​. It was also decided that Senior Tutor roles will remain unchanged, but with improvements to support staff.

The Dean of Students Office is now working on a report of recommendations to circulate to the wider community. To stay up-to-date with progress on this project, please see the Personal Tutoring Review webpage. You can also email DeanofStudents@warwick.ac.uk.

The aim of this review is to develop a new simplified set of approaches, policies and processes with regards to mitigating circumstances for assignments and exams. The focus for this project was on all students, from Foundation-level to PGR.

Although still ongoing, this project has so far included a desk-based review of comparable institutions to establish other ways of working in these areas. This included evaluating the impact of mitigating circumstances policies at other institutions, in terms of the support provided to students and members of staff, and whether such approaches would be workable or advisable at Warwick.

The working group have developed a set of recommendations, which will now be taken to the Student Success and Quality & Standards sub-committees, before being communicated to the wider university community.

If you have any questions about this review, please contact

DeanofStudents@warwick.ac.uk.

Led by the Dean of Students Office, the 2024-25 academic year saw the introduction of nominated Disabled Student Champions in all academic departments.

These are staff members whose role is to help build inclusive learning environments, improving communication between departments and central services, and ensuring students' needs are met consistently across the University. They are advocates for disabled students, working closely with personal tutors, the Senior Tutor, Directors of Study, professional services colleagues and others to support disabled students at all stages of their academic journey.

To support the Disabled Student Champions in their work, the Dean of Students Office created a network that is made up of the Champions, Disability Advisers, and student representatives. This range of experiences and perspectives continues to be important in identifying the challenges faced by disabled students and seeking solutions in a collaborative and collective way.

The Network meets regularly to discuss relevant sector issues, receive updates and training, and share good practice in inclusive teaching, assessment, and support - ultimately aiming for every disabled student to succeed at Warwick.

To find out more about the Disabled Student Champions Network, you can visit their webpages or email DeanofStudents@warwick.ac.uk.

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Electronic marking labels are given to disabled students during their Reasonable Adjustments review meeting to alert assessors of challenges students with Specific Learning Differences (SpLDs) may encounter on written or oral work, such as spelling, grammar, punctuation and structuring work.

To understand staff and students’ experiences and perceived issues with electronic marking labels, Disability Services used co-creation to review sector-wide practice and ran focus groups to learn about students’ experiences using electronic marking labels and staffs’ understanding of marking labels.

Based on their findings, Disability Services have renamed electronic marking labels to Consideration Marking Adjustments and have rewritten staff and student guidance on how to access and use the adjustments. They hope that this will provide better clarity for staff and students and aim to launch the revised materials in the early part of the 2024/25 academic year.

Next steps:

The project is still ongoing and Disability Services is redeveloping their webpages on Consideration Marking Adjustments to be clearer and easier to use. They are also considering additional resources that could be useful for staff and students, such as a short video to outline the process of how Considerate Marking Adjustments work and where to find further guidance.

Since the launch of the University's Social Inclusion strategy, there has been a significant increase in EDI-related activity within academic departments.

To recognise and reward some of the fantastic work happening across the University, evidence of work relating to inclusion and EDI is now recognised and included throughout the academic promotion criteria.

This work was progressed by the Anti-Racist Pedagogy Learning Circle, with support from the University Provost.

Output: Updated academic promotion evidence framework. Read more about Learning Circle outputs in the WIHEA Annual Report 2023.