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No Gaps Project

About the No Gaps Project

The No Gaps Project aims to make addressing awarding gaps part of our core business at the University by working with academic departments to use institutional data to understand their gaps in awarding, continuation and completion, and to design evidence-informed interventions to address these gaps.

Through the No Gaps project, the Inclusive Education Team will support departments to explore and understand their gaps in their own context, working with student partners to co-construct enhancement activities, and reporting as part of the Education Quality Enhancement Cycle.

During 2024-2025, the No Gaps project worked with five pilot departments at the University. Full institutional rollout of the project will take place during 2025-2026, following a five stage process detailed below, supported by the Inclusive Education team. 

To contact us, please email no-gaps-project@york.ac.uk

Introduce

Academic departments will be provided with resources, including self-service material, to give an overview of:

  • The Access and Participation Fund (APP)
  • York’s institutional gaps
  • The No Gaps Project
  • How this links to the wider University objectives 

Access and Participation Plan Summary 25/26

Data Review

In this stage, academic departments will use specific departmental data to identify the gaps for underrepresented student groups in their departmental context.

No gaps data workbooks will be shared with departments alongside prepared commentaries on data to support this stage of the process. Self-serve resources, such as a written guidance document and screencast, will support this data exploration. 

Departments can also request a meeting with Inclusive Education to talk through their data.

Resources

Analyse

In this stage, academic departments (supported by the Inclusive Education Team) will:

  • Review current departmental and programme-level activities in specific areas of inclusive practice
  • Explore how risks to equality of opportunity for under-represented student groups (the ‘York risks’) are experienced by students in their departmental and disciplinary context. 
  • This will involve workshops and other activities (facilitated by the Inclusive Education Team)
  • The areas of inclusive practice are:
Action

In this stage, departments will plan actions and interventions (supported by the Inclusive Education Team) based on the insights from the Analyse stage. This will involve

  • Developing departmental level interventions which are data informed and evidence led
  • Planning further interventions targeted to address a more specific risk or area.

Student Success Project Fund projects’ details and summaries from 2024-25

Student Success Project Fund projects’ details and summaries from 2023-24

Student Success Project Fund projects’ details and summaries from 2022-22

Evaluate

Departments will develop evaluation plans (supported by the Inclusive Education team) which will set out how they plan to measure the impact of the planned interventions. 

This will ensure a robust evaluation process is embedded from the outset.

 

The No Gaps Team

Project leads:

  • Professor Jill Webb - Associate Dean (Teaching, Learning and Students), Faculty of Social Sciences 
  • Jess Penn - Head of Inclusive Education

Inclusive Education Team:

  • David Gent - Evidence and Impact Manager
  • Tamlyn Ryan - Inclusive Education Adviser (Faculty of Sciences)
  • Nick Glover - Inclusive Education Adviser (Faculty of Social Sciences)
  • Fran Murray - Inclusive Education Adviser (Faculty of Arts and Humanities)

Project Management Support:

  • Pip Rackstraw - Teaching, Learning and Students Project Officer, Faculty of Social Sciences

Sciences Faculty Academic Lead:  

  • Professor Andy Parsons 

Social Sciences Faculty Academic Lead: 

  • Professor Liz Thomas