Table 15 - Access and participation investment 2020/21 to 2022/23

Type of data

Administrative data

Data source

HESA (Higher Education Statistics Agency) is part of Jisc. We are the experts in UK higher education data and analysis. We have been collecting higher education information since the 1994/95 academic year.

Finance data is taken from the HESA Finance record, which universities, colleges and other higher education providers return to HESA on an annual basis. The Finance record collects a range of information about the primary financial statements from HE providers' published accounts.

From 2018/19, data for English HE providers (excluding further education colleges and sixth form colleges under the primary regulation of the Education and Skills Funding Agency) was collected by the Office for Students.

We provide data and analysis on finances of HE providers to a wide variety of customers, including:

• Governments
• Universities (via the Heidi Plus analytics tool)
• Academic and commercial researchers
• Students and potential students
• Trade unions and employers' associations
• Policy makers.

Our data is used to regulate the sector, inform policy making, advance understanding of social and economic trends, support decision making, and enhance public understanding of - and confidence in - the higher education sector.

Related releases

Our HE Provider Data: Finance data pages collect together all of the tables we publish on finances in higher education.

Further information

• Definitions - Finances
• Data intelligence - Finances
• It may be helpful to refer to the information disclosed in a provider’s financial statements to help understand or contextualise the figures presented.

Only providers in England with an OfS approved access and participation plan are required to submit the data presented in this table (other providers in England may have submitted data but were not required to).  An access and participation plan sets out how higher education providers will improve equality of opportunity in higher education, and must be approved by the OfS if the provider wants to charge higher tuition fees. A provider’s access and participation plan must include the financial investment it plans to make on access and participation work. The data in Table 15 shows providers’ access and participation plan expenditure, and is consistent with the disclosure on access and participation expenditure returned in the notes to the provider’s audited financial statements.

The data on access and participation expenditure is returned under four headings:

• Access investment. This includes all expenditure in the financial year on activities and measures that support the ambitions set out in an access and participation plan, where they relate to access to higher education.
• Financial support investment. This includes expenditure provided to underrepresented or disadvantaged students in the financial year, such as bursaries, scholarships, etc.
• Support for disabled students. This includes, but is not limited to, expenditure in the financial year in relation to the OfS disabled students’ premium. This excludes expenditure included in the two categories above.
• Research and evaluation investment. This includes expenditure in the financial year that relates to research and evaluation activities.

The amounts returned in the above categories can include staff costs where these are intrinsic to the delivery of the access and participation activities. Where these are included, however, the provider must be clear in the disclosure note within their financial statements as to how much these costs are and that these costs are already included in the overall staff costs figures included in the financial statements. Some of the expenditure included in this table may therefore already be included under staff costs in Tables 1, 8 and 12.

For more information on access and participation plans see the OfS website at Access and participation plans - Office for Students.