Our approach to widening participation

Lancaster University is committed to improving equality of opportunity and supporting the success of students from underrepresented backgrounds. Through our Access and Participation Plan (APP), we set out the actions we are taking to support access, continuation, attainment and progression.

This includes targeted activity across the student lifecycle, alongside financial support such as scholarships and bursaries, to help ensure that students from underrepresented backgrounds can access higher education, thrive during their studies and progress beyond university.

Office for Students requirements

The University is required to publish the following ‘transparency information’ as a condition of its registration with the Office for Students (OfS). The relevant condition reads:

• F1. The provider must provide to the OfS, and publish, in the manner and form specified by the OfS, the transparency information set out in section 9 of the Higher Education and Research Act (HERA).

The transparency information relates to the University’s commitment to improving equality of opportunity for students from underrepresented backgrounds. You can read more about our priorities and targets in this area in our OfS-approved Access and Participation Plan. For a broader overview of our work to support students from underrepresented backgrounds, please visit our Widening Participation Strategy webpages.

For Transparency Information 2026, the University is required to publish undergraduate attainment data. The workbook linked below contains information on the number of undergraduate students who attained a particular degree or other academic award, or a particular level of such an award, on completion of their course, for 2023–24 and 2024–25 qualifiers.

The data are shown by reference to:

• The gender of the individuals to which they relate
• Their ethnicity

Their socioeconomic background in the form of the English Index of Multiple Deprivation (EIMD) 2019.

Sector information and further background

You can read more about the Office for Students’ current transparency information requirements under Condition F1 on the OfS website.

The data

In order to fulfil this requirement of its OfS registration, the University uses this web page to make available the Transparency Information 2026 in full.