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Widening participation of students in receipt of DSA (table T7)

This table is designed to provide information about the percentage of disabled students in the sector. It covers all UK domiciled undergraduate students, rather than just entrants. All full-time students and those part-time students who are studying at least 50% of the time are included.

The indicator is the percentage of students who are in receipt of Disabled Students’ Allowance. This is less than the percentage who are recorded as disabled, but should prove to be more robust. A number of people have noted that students do not have to inform their HE provider that they are in receipt of DSA and so potentially there could be a substantial undercount of the numbers involved. This does not appear to be a major problem.

View all previous years' releases

The number of part-time students at an HE provider can be small. Combined with the extremely small percentages of disabled students in the group, the values of the indicator in such cases could be very variable. They should therefore be interpreted with care.

In 2007/08 and 2008/09, data for the Open University have been excluded from the part-time figures due to changes introduced by HESA to the method of apportioning FTEs between years which has affected the count of Open University part-time students.

The table is in three sections, one covering full-time first degree students, one covering full-time undergraduates (on first degree, diploma and other undergraduate non-degree courses) and the third covering part-time undergraduates studying at least 50% of the time. Each section gives the number of students in the category, the percentage who are in receipt of DSA (the indicator) and the benchmark. The benchmark is based on entry qualifications of the students and their subject of study.

Table T7 and Supplementary table SD1

The main table T7 provides a breakdown by HE provider. The supplementary table (SD1) provide some background information and context figures for the sector used in the derivation of the benchmarks.