Access and Participation Plans of universities in England (2020-2024): What do they really say about social mobility?

This study sought to find: How is language used to describe social mobility in Access and Participation Plans of universities in England? Are there differences in how social mobility is discussed by universities in England in relation to the university’s HE grouping? Are there implications for particular student groups due to the language and focus of Access and Participation Plans? The study focuses on universities in England, drawing on a sample of 25. We have used publicly available Access and Participation Plans for each university to develop a corpus for each grouping. The corpora were then analysed and coded to identify inductive themes from the data. They were further analysed using a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis to identify the power relationships. The findings show the plans discussed widening participation in similar ways but lacked specific commitments and detail about how they intended to achieve that. This helps to reveal the intent and clarity of widening participation efforts in universities. Universities appeared to miss a ‘big picture’ approach to enabling social mobility. The language in Access and Participation Plans appeared to be focused on meeting the requirements set by the OfS rather than a considered intersectional approach to enabling social mobility.