Nearly one in five students in higher education now declare a disability to their university, according to 2024–25 HESA data.

If you look at self-reported figures in the Hepi/Advance HE 2025 Student Academic Experience Survey (SAES), that number jumps to 37 per cent. Whether that’s because of an increased awareness, a rise in disclosure, or successful access work on the part of institutions, it matters that the number of disabled students in higher education is growing.

At the centre of a growing disabled student population is a significant experience gap. The 2025 SAES found disabled students were almost twice as likely to have considered dropping out – 39 per cent versus 22 per cent for their non-disabled peers. Most disabled students who disclose a disability to their institution receive some type of individualised student support plan with agreed adjustments. Disabled Students UK’s 2025 annual report told us that only 44 per cent reported that all agreed adjustments had been implemented. And in the last round of the National Student Survey, disabled students reported being significantly less satisfied with organisation and management and student voice. In short, adjustments aren’t being made and disabled students don’t feel heard.

The system in which disabled students operate is under pressure. As financial sustainability and the subsequent efficiencies that come with it dominate the sector, the infrastructure which is meant to deliver support is straining – inclusion takes a backseat when things get tight. Despite all this, last year, Savanta research on disabled students highlighted a paradox – full-time undergraduate continuation and attainment rates were 1.1 and 2.0 percentage points higher, respectively, than their non-disabled peers. The data tell us disabled students are succeeding, while they are experiencing gaps in support – they’re achieving despite barriers.

Under pressure

The sector’s focus on financial sustainability is shaping what support looks like. DSUK’s annual report found the share of disabled students with a support plan fell from 77 per cent in 2024 to 66 per cent in 2025, and fewer had met with a disability advisor. One other finding stands out: more disabled students reported supportive attitudes from staff, yet that goodwill isn’t turning into adjustments. If staff are increasingly willing, something else is getting in the way of delivery.

It’s not just cuts at institutions. Earlier this year the Department for Education consulted on proposals to move from funding assistive software as standard under Disabled Students’ Allowance (DSA) to only funding it where free alternatives can’t meet students’ needs. Where DSA cuts back, costs shift onto institutions, widening the divide between those institutions that can afford to fill the gap and those that can’t.

Accessibility measures that had been embedded into pandemic teaching pedagogy – lecture recordings, hybrid participation, access to slides in advance and easy access to extensions – are being rolled back. These were often anticipatory adjustments, supporting all students, including those who were yet to disclose a disability to their institution. When disabled students don’t disclose, anticipatory adjustments matter more.

Culture is changing and staff and institutions care – perhaps what’s missing is the policy and accountability that’s needed to accompany it. Where institutions are having to make more and more individual adjustments, why hasn’t universal design become the more sustainable and efficient next step? Finances are part of the story, but they don’t explain why adjustments that have been agreed, and often cost little beyond staff time, still don’t happen.

A move away from pandemic-era accessibility, a financially straitened higher education sector with less money and fewer staff, and frameworks and policies that aren’t meeting both expectations and demand have created potential conditions for legal risk. The ground is well trodden and as has been well argued on the site before – disability is visible in the statistics, in case law, and in policy documents, but this doesn’t always translate to meaningful action.

What turns the dial

Regulatory design often starts with outcomes and works backwards rather than focusing on experience and legal compliance. Because outcomes look healthy, the system doesn’t flag disability as a priority. This helps explain why 27 universities have no disability targets whatsoever in access and participation plans and 35 have no experience-stage targets. The existing levers for change all pull in different directions. The Disabled Student Commitment has no legal force, the legal position since the Abrahart ruling implies more than it prescribes what universities should do, and the outputs from the Department for Education Mental Health Taskforce all remain optional.

Back in February, the Office for Students announced it will develop and publish a statement of expectations on disability. It will set out what it expects of providers, but it will be principles-based allowing institutions to decide what helps them meet the mark most effectively in their context. The regulator said it will monitor the impact of the statement system-wide and at an individual provider level. When announced Suzanne Carrie, head of student equality and welfare, praised the work of the sector but was “deeply concerned by issues that students are facing, and the slow pace of change in some areas.”

When we find evidence of systematic exclusion, it’s easy to suggest it’s because institutions don’t care or don’t understand enough. The new OfS statement of expectations opens the door for greater accountability for providers in England by, in theory, outlining what good looks like and then holding providers to it. In conversations with colleagues across the sector, it often doesn’t seem like goodwill is what’s missing – indeed students report more supportive attitudes from staff. So what is missing?

It could be policies and processes that turn support plans into practice, the lack of a joined-up system between the NHS, DSA and university support, or day-to-day pedagogy and assessment design. It could be cultures that shape whether students feel confident enough to chase adjustments, to ask questions, or the systems both inside and outside universities they’re expected to navigate, often alone.

We need to know what’s working. What’s making the dial turn on inclusion and support and what will make the difference in making new regulatory expectations achievable, rather than a tick-box exercise.

This term we’re convening a new editorial series on meeting expectations on disability inclusion in higher education. Across the next few months we’ll be looking at where and why the gaps persist in the disabled student experience and in advance of new regulatory guidance, what change may look like for practitioners and students. Plenty of people are thinking hard about this and may not be in rooms where decisions get made. We hope to surface some of that collective wisdom.

This blog is the first in our series on meeting expectations on disability inclusion. If you are interested in contributing to the series get in touch.