Finding solutions to help our students to succeed

“Student numbers at the School of Politics and International Relations have trebled in the last ten years or so,” says Dr James Strong, the school’s Director of Education and a former Queen Mary Academy Fellow. “The profile of our students has also shifted. More of our students are from a working class background or they’re the first in their families to go to university.”

However, alongside these changes there have also been signs of lower student engagement such as an increase in students not completing their degree. As well as the immediate impact on any students who leave, this can also have an effect on university funding and league tables. Dr Strong continues: “As educators, it’s our job to help students succeed. If students from certain demographic groups are less likely to succeed, that suggests something needs to change. The problem was that we didn’t know much about our students’ lives. We needed evidence about how we should adapt our teaching and learning to better suit our students.”

Dr Strong applied for Westfield funding to research this issue. He began by examining the school’s existing data and found that the main driver of lower attainment appeared to be lower attendance.

“If we compare a male or BAME student with a 100% attendance rate with a female or White student with a 100% attendance rate, we don’t see that gap. This suggests that we don’t have an outcomes problem, we have an engagement problem. So, the real question is, what is driving these different attendance rates?”

To find out more, Dr Strong surveyed students about their paid work and caring responsibilities, the space where they study at home and what support they had if they were struggling. The responses to the survey fed into focus groups, where Dr Strong could ask for more detailed qualitative feedback from students.

A surprising finding was that 90% of survey respondents said they were commuting to Queen Mary from their family home, an unusually high proportion for UK higher education. This often meant that students had extra responsibilities, such as helping to care for younger siblings. Some had no desk at their family home so they might have to work from their bed in a shared bedroom.

“Time was a big factor,” Dr Strong explains. “But there was no association between student engagement and the amount of time spent on jobs or caring; it was about how able they were able to juggle their commitments.” Some students felt more able to ask for flexibility, both from their tutors and their employers.

“This is related to social capital and the confidence to ask. It’s a good finding for us because we can do something about it. If the problem our students face is capitalism, we can’t solve it. But if the problem is that some of our students don’t feel confident asking to attend a different class, the solution is simple: we can just have a policy that everyone is allowed to attend a different class without asking.”

The research also showed that students were more engaged when they gained confidence in the classroom and when they had support from other students.

“We can’t change everything straight away, but now we have a basis of knowledge to start making changes,” Dr Strong says. In addition to the policy on attending different classes, these changes include encouraging teachers to praise effort as well as correct answers in order to improve confidence and encouraging informal community building among students. There have also been improvements in access to study spaces on campus.

Dr Strong adds: “How we respond is a multi-year project. But if I’m right and the problem is with student engagement and we solve that problem, we should see those outcome gaps disappear.”