An innovative feature of the project has been the construction of Equity Scorecards from raw data to examine both advantage and disadvantage simultaneously.

Intersections have been measured between a number of social variables, namely gender, socio-economic status (based on the indicators of ‘deprived’ schools /regions), and age, in relation to educational processes: access, retention and achievement in two public and two private universities, and four programmes of study in each university. We chose to examine retention and achievement as well as access, as widening participation initiatives often focus on increasing enrolment, and fail to intersect retention and completion with structures of inequality.

The Equity Scorecards have been compiled largely from raw data on admission, retention, completion and achievement. The absence of data is data itself. Datasets have been constructed by using the lists of students enrolled on each programme and tracking information from application forms, central and departmental data and sometimes by contacting students directly. These were then analysed using the STATA statistical software package and Equity Scorecards were produced for each case study university.

Download the Equity Scorecards

• Access: Ghana (Public, Private)
• Access: Tanzania (Public, Private)
• Completion and Achievement: Ghana
• Completion and Achievement: Tanzania
• Retention: Ghana
• Retention: Tanzania (Public)