Impact Report 2025
SUCCESS
FOR ALL
Impact Report 2025
SUCCESS
FOR ALL
Impact Report 2025
Working for a fairer future
Introduction
Success for All at the University of Exeter is a strategic, university-wide initiative designed to eliminate disparities in access, experience, and outcomes for students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds.
Embedded in the University’s 2030 Strategy, the programme aims to ensure that every student, regardless of socioeconomic status, ethnicity, disability, or prior educational experience, can thrive academically and personally.
Its core objective is to embed equity and inclusion into every aspect of university life – from admissions and curriculum design to student support and graduate outcomes. More widely, work through Success for All supports our work within the region and nationally to promote equality of opportunity and social mobility. The reach of Success for All is extensive, both within the University and across the sector.
Internally, the programme has engaged thousands of students and staff through its initiatives, training, and events. Its impact is reflected in the University’s TEF 2023 Gold rating across all categories, with the panel citing outstanding outcomes for all student groups and effective support for underrepresented students.
This report summarises activities carried out through Success for All in the last year and reflects on longer term progress against our access and participation commitments.
Student Voice: Shaping Success for All
Student voice has been central to how we develop, deliver and evaluate our approach to widening participation and inclusive education.
The Studentsߴ Guild and Studentsߴ Union played a vital role in shaping our new Access and Participation Plan for 2025-29. Through formal consultation, focus groups and their submission to the Office for Students, student representatives ensured our commitments reflected the real challenges facing underrepresented students.
Their insights highlighted critical issues around the cost of living, accessibility for neurodivergent students, and the need for better-coordinated support services. All of these are now embedded in our plan.
The Guild and Union are represented on our Success for All Strategy Group and across our working groups. They challenge our thinking, propose solutions and hold us to account on delivery.
Student priorities gathered through consultation shape our Success for All priorities. The “cost of belonging crisis” – the intersection of financial pressures and barriers to feeling part of the university community – priorities around classism, accessibility, employability and student wellbeing are now driving collaborative projects across the institution.
The Scholarߴs Fund shows how student voice translates into tangible support. Working through Success for All governance, the Guild and Union developed and submitted funding proposals. Students also served on the assessment panel that evaluated all twelve proposals submitted by working groups.
Three projects were successfully funded:
- A multi-campus Food Poverty initiative supporting students through food vouchers, campus food banks, breakfast clubs and a soup kitchen
- A Cornwall Bus Bursary providing support to more than 70 students from low-income backgrounds with transport costs to access on-campus learning
- An extension of paid internships to postgraduate taught students who were previously ineligible for the scheme
Through representation, consultation and genuine partnership, students continue to ensure that Success for All remains grounded in the realities of student life and focused on making meaningful change where it matters most.
Success for All Champions
The engagement and support of staff and students are critical in building an inclusive university environment.
Our Success for All network is made up of over 400 motivated staff and students who are informal champions for diversity and inclusion with many actively involved in work to promote equality of opportunity through their research, teaching, job roles or activism.
Regular communications and development opportunities help engage the network and wider university to celebrate success, offer guidance, share best practice and useful resources to support inclusion. Our Success for All Collaboration Hub has logged over 1,200 contributions, facilitating the sharing of best practice and co-creation of inclusive interventions. A termly newsletter is sent out to all staff, while regular online development sessions, good practice toolkits and resources within our Success for All Network site and annual conference, help to support a growing community of practice.
Our Success for All conference and awards are annual highlights, providing opportunities to work together to tackle some of the persistent barriers to equal opportunity and celebrate the outstanding work of staff and students. In 2024/25, award winners were involved in innovative projects to tackle classism, promote race equality, widen access, influence national policy, embed inclusive education and support students.
Over 1,200 contributions logged by the Success for All Collaboration Hub.
Success for All is supported by a network of champions across the University.
Our annual conferences promote the sharing of good practice and celebrate the achievements of staff and students.
Influencing regional and national debates
The University has extended its influence beyond Exeter, contributing to sector-wide efforts to improve equity, inclusion, and social mobility.
Regionally, the University plays a leading role in the South West Social Mobility Commission, working with employers, educators, and policymakers to address systemic disadvantage. The programme’s frameworks and toolkits have been shared with other institutions through national networks such as NEON and the Office for Students’ What Works programme.
Nationally, Professor Lisa Roberts, our Vice Chancellor, is part of a Government Access and Participation task and finish group working to create proposals to help more students from disadvantaged backgrounds access higher education. Meanwhile Professor Lee Elliot-Major, a leading commentator on social mobility, has contributed to various policy debates and provided expertise to a range of initiatives this year such as the UUK / Sutton Trust / UCAS project on contextual admissions.
The Centre for Social Mobility, the UK’s only university-based centre dedicated to promoting equity through higher education, provides research leadership and policy influence. The Centre has influenced national policy debates through research, consultation responses, and partnerships with organisations such as the Sutton Trust and the Social Mobility Commission.
As part of the House of Lords Social Mobility Committee inquiry, Professor Anna Mountford-Zimdars delivered oral evidence, supported by a cross institution written submission. Several of Exeter’s priority areas – strengthening regional collaboration, improving transport and digital infrastructure, and widening access to high-quality qualifications and apprenticeships – are reflected in the Committee’s final report.
In October, we hosted a UN Global Compact Network UK social mobility consultation in Exeter, which reiterated many of the challenges identified through our engagement with the Lords Committee – particularly transport barriers and limited progression opportunities within a regional economy dominated by small businesses. We look forward to the launch of the consultation’s final report in spring 2026, which will provide clear recommendations for both business and government.
Building a strong evidence base
Even when we deliver the most impactful programmes, collect rich data, and conduct rigorous evaluations, the value of our insights can be diminished if they aren’t communicated effectively. Without clear and purposeful dissemination, those insights may fall short of their potential to inform and influence.
Over recent years we have been building capacity and skills in evaluation to ensure our interventions to support students are impactful. Last year our focus was on enhancing how we communicate evaluation. We hosted a series of five workshops exploring the diverse formats available for sharing evaluation findings – from blogs and infographics to comprehensive reports. Each session delved into the considerations for different output types, with a strong emphasis on identifying key stakeholders and crafting clear, compelling messages.
The workshops were led by Professor Jacqueline Stevenson, an evaluator with extensive experience both within and beyond the higher education sector. They brought together colleagues from across the University, creating space for meaningful discussion and collaborative learning around this vital topic.
Participants applied their learning to live projects, advancing existing commitments while experimenting with new approaches to evaluation outputs. Notable outcomes included blogs published in WonkHE and research posters presented at national conferences. The series also helped cultivate a growing community of practice around evaluation, which will continue to evolve. Insights from the workshops have directly informed the development of our publication guidance, now available to all staff via the Evaluation Toolkit.
University of the Year: UK Social Mobility Awards
The University of Exeter was awarded University of the Year in 2025 in the UK Social Mobility Awards which recognise British companies and institutions promoting and increasing social mobility.
We were proud to receive the award, given in recognition of our commitment to support individuals from lower socio-economic backgrounds across our student and staff body which was built on a strategy of three core interlinked pillars: student success, staff inclusion and regional impact. Key activities across these three pillars in 2024-25 included:
The award recognised the University’s response to external challenges to social mobility such as the pressures of rising inflation and the cost-of-living crisis by steps such as increasing investment in student funding; expanding opportunities to ‘earn as you learn’ via Degree Apprenticeships and flexible student employment options; working in partnership with students to address affordability and support wellbeing; and made changes to its curriculum to embed inclusive teaching practice and offer greater transition support from school into higher education.