The applicant comes from a low participation neighbourhood. His school has predicted that he will achieve BCD at A level. He is applying to his local university.

The university is committed to fair admissions, has been using various data sources and toolsets to identify weaknesses in their processes, including potential areas where fairness might be compromised and has acted decisively to change processes and policies for two reasons: in the interests of fairness and to minimise drop-outs. Their primary concern has been to analyse detailed statistical data from their own systems, HESA and UCAS over 5 years in respect of admissions and the composition of the HEI’s student body, in order to identify trends and patterns that might suggest inconsistency or potential bias in decision-making. Recognising that the involvement of individual admissions tutors in the decision-making process can lead to unconscious inconsistency or discrimination, the admissions senior management team has worked to reduce admissions tutors’ involvement in the detailed decision-making processes, while allowing them to retain control by encoding the admissions tutors’ criteria for decision-making in comprehensive templates. Decision-making encoded in the templates is handled by centralised liaison officers, who also discuss unencoded new cases with the admissions tutors, so that their criteria can be captured in the templates for use in the future.

The processes involve identifying the qualification profile of the applicant, loading relevant information from their structured application webfolio into a standard template, so that liaison officers can carry out holistic assessment of each applicant. In borderline cases, or cases which are not adequately covered by the templates, the liaison officer will discuss the assessment and decision with the admissions tutor.

In the case of our applicant, the student application system identifies him as a school leaver studying GCSE and A level qualifications, so loads relevant parts of his application webfolio into the appropriate template. The Liaison Officer is able to examine the details easily via the on screen template.

As the applicant does not currently hold the required BBB at A level, but is taking the qualifications this summer, the decision will be either a conditional offer or rejection.

The applicant is from a low participation neighbourhood and elements of his application webfolio clearly demonstrate a determination to succeed, but a lack of independent study skills. His case is similar to cases handled earlier and the template includes a recommendation that a conditional offer of BBB or BCC plus attendance at a summer school would be appropriate.

The Liaison Officer inputs this decision.