Kent Law School’s commitment to ensuring all students achieve the best degree they can has produced a remarkable outcome this summer with news that, for the first time in its history, Black Minority Ethnic (BAME) students have outperformed their White peers.
The Law School has achieved an attainment gap of +5%, closing the gap between BAME students and White students attaining a First or 2(1) by 36% from last year (it was -31% in 2019).
Sheree Palmer, the Law School’s Student Success Project Manager, said: ‘This is an incredible result which has only been possible thanks to the amazing support and work from colleagues across KLS who have encouraged and worked with us! I cannot thank everyone enough. A great deal of thought and work has gone into delivering strategic interventions to close these attainment gaps to ensure all students can achieve their full academic potential and it has certainly paid off. These results will make a huge difference to our students.’
Sheree attributes part of this success to the Law School’s Academic Coaching for Excellence (ACE) programme. The programme sees selected students partnered with an academic from the Law School as their ACE coach. The ACE coach functions as a supportive, non-judgemental, critical friend providing a degree of academic and professional guidance. Participating students are supported to engage fully with the academic working environment, to utilise strategies for learning, to increase their engagement with the Law School and the University, and – ultimately – to raise attainment and improve progression rates into graduate-level employment or postgraduate study.
Final-year Law LLB student Beatrice Fatungase secured a £14k Bar School scholarship earlier this summer, helped in large part by the excellent working relationship she developed with her ACE coach, Lecturer Dr Will Mbioh. Beatrice’s efforts to engage with employability opportunities, work experience and extra-curricular activities at the Law School were rewarded with a prestigious Duke and Duchess of Cambridge Scholarship from The Honourable Society of Middle Temple (one of only three awarded to candidates deemed specially deserving of financial assistance). The award will help fund the LLM Legal Practice (Bar) course that Beatrice is due to begin at BPP Holborn in September.
Beatrice said: ‘For me, being part of the ACE programme was great as I developed a good relationship with my ACE Coach. He really tailored the programme to my needs. He didn’t approach it in a structured way but had a conversation with me to understand what I wanted to get from the programme and how he could help me achieve my goals. Our relationship was also built on respect and honesty. I understood that he was going out of his way to help me, therefore I wanted to make the most out of the opportunity that I had been given. At first, we met once a week but sometimes twice if It was needed and he had to time to meet with me. Other times it was once every two weeks. It was simply dependent on how much support I felt I needed.
‘The ACE Programme made my student experience at Kent so much easier. My final year was one of the easiest years as I was able to apply everything that I had learnt and consequently, my grades were more consistent. I was also prepared for life after university as that was also one of my main concerns (my ACE Coach helped me to prepare for my scholarship interview which ended up being successful). Therefore, I could enjoy my final year as I had a plan for post-university.’
Read more about Beatrice’s scholarship success story on our news blog.
Looking ahead, the Law School will continue to implement targeted strategies that help meet the needs of students as effectively as possible. Sheree said: ‘We’ll be looking at skills support, staff training, employability enhancement and revision sessions to support students to raise their attainment and I’ll be using feedback from KLS student surveys to inform those interventions and improvements to the ACE programme.’
The Student Success (Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity – EDI) Project at Kent Law School is part of an institutional research project investigating factors that can affect student attainment and retention. The project aims to promote student Equality, Diversity and Inclusivity by conducting ongoing research into attainment differences.