Access & Participation Statement 2024-25

Introduction

NSCD’s mission is to provide an inspirational learning experience, from first contact through into the profession, enabling aspiring dance artists, and dance professionals, regardless of background, to shape the future of dance.

 Our vision is underpinned by our core values which reflect equity and inclusion, from first contact to the excellence of our educational provision, to the support we provide our graduates and their professional development in the years ahead.

NSCD ensures that this vision is upheld by numerous Committees including the Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee and the Access and Participation Committee.

The Office for Students publishes data dashboards which provide data on student populations and outcomes for students from recognised groups under-represented in Higher Education and considered target groups for access and participation activity.

The figures below have been taken from the OfS Data Dashboards[1] and provide a percentage of the student entrants in 2022/23 of these recognised groups at NSCD.

Student Population: new entrants 2022/23[i]

• Undergraduate students: 64%
• Postgraduate students: 36%
• International: 12.8%
• Male: 19.8%
• Female: 77.9%
• Non-binary: DPL[2]

 Full-time undergraduate first-degree UK-domicile entrants (2022/23)[3]:

• Students from low-participation neighbourhoods (POLAR4 Q1 or 2[ii]): 38.8% (28% previous year)
• Students from the most deprived neighbourhoods (IMD Q1 or 2[iii]): 19.6% (19.2% previous year)
• Students with a declared disability: 30.0% (55.9% previous year)
  • Those with specific learning differences: 20.0% (28.8% previous year)
  • Those with mental health conditions: Value supressed (10.3% previous year)
  • Those with multiple impairments: 6.7% (11.9% previous year)
• People of Global Majority: 19.1% (6.3% previous year)

Strategy

Our access and participation work is embedded through the school’s 2023-30 Strategic Plan and NSCD’s Equality, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Commitments.

Access & Participation Plan (APP) Targets

As evidenced in our current APP, NSCD has an excellent track record of helping all undergraduate students, no matter what background, stay on course, achieve positive grades and progress onto further training or employment.

NSCD have 3 targets on its current Access & Participation Plan which are to increase the Access of 3 target groups:

1. Students from low-participation neighbourhoods
2. Students from the most deprived neighbourhoods
3. Students from the Global Majority

Activities

To encourage these groups to study undergraduate courses at NSCD we have a wide range of targeted outreach including but not limited to:

Targeted Student Recruitment:

• Open Day Travel Bursary available for one youth dance group.
• ELEVATE – attainment raising project for targeted Yorkshire young dancers.

Targeted Application Support:

• Free workshops offering applicants insights into the audition process.
• Application Fee Waivers.
• Audition Travel Bursaries

Targeted training & provision for youth dancers:

• Kick Off Boys Dance Project – regular training and performance opportunities for young dancers identifying as male, free of charge.
• Access Bursaries – financial support for young dancers accessing our regular children’s and youth training programmes and our intensive courses.
• INSPIRE – schools project to enthuse and inspire young dancers.

NSCD also have a vast children’s and youth dance offer, which includes the Centre for Advanced Training, funded by the Department for Education, which attracts many young dancers from targeted backgrounds, through a wide-ranging outreach programme throughout the Yorkshire area.

Review

This Access and Participation statement is reviewed annually. We will update and re-publish this statement annually as required by condition A2 of the Office for Students Regulatory Framework.

[1] https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/size-and-shape-of-provision-data-dashboard/data-dashboard/

[2] [DPL]: where data has been suppressed for data protection reasons. The code [DPL] has been used by OfS to indicate where the data has been suppressed due to numerator or headcount that is less than or equal to 2, meaning that the indicator will take on a value close to 0 per cent.

[3] https://www.officeforstudents.org.uk/data-and-analysis/access-and-participation-data-dashboard/data-dashboard/

[i] 2022/23 is the most recently published data.

[ii] The participation of local areas (POLAR) classification groups areas across the UK based on the proportion of young people who participate in higher education. It looks at how likely young people are to participate in higher education across the UK and shows how this varies by area. POLAR classifies local areas into five groups – or quintiles – based on the proportion of young people who enter higher education aged 18 or 19 years old. Quintile one shows the lowest rate of participation. Quintile five shows the highest rate of participation.

[iii]The Index of Multiple Deprivation, commonly known as the IMD, is the official measure of relative deprivation for small areas in England. IMD ranks every small area in England from 1 (most deprived area) to 32,844 (least deprived area). The IMD combines information from the seven domains to produce an overall relative measure of deprivation. The domains are combined using the following weights: Income Deprivation (22.5%), Employment Deprivation (22.5%), Education, Skills and Training Deprivation (13.5%), Health Deprivation and Disability (13.5%), Crime (9.3%), Barriers to Housing and Services (9.3%), Living Environment Deprivation (9.3%). The weights were derived from consideration of the academic literature on poverty and deprivation, as well as the levels of robustness of the indicators.

Statement published: November 2024

Access & Participation Review 2023/24

The following document summarises and evaluates the activities in 2023/24, which support the Access & Participation Plan: APP 2324 Annual report Summary

OfS Condition F1 – Transparency Information 2023

The information published below shows: 

The number of students who attained a particular degree or other academic award, or a particular level of such an award, on completion of their course with us at Northern School of Contemporary Dance.

It shows these numbers by reference to:

• the gender of the individuals to which they relate
• their ethnicity
• their socioeconomic background.

TransparencyTables23_10008816

Please note: The small, specialist nature of NSCD means that much of the data available for this report been suppressed (ie not included).

Numbers have been rounded to the nearest multiple of 10 and where figures are 20 or less, the field is populated with an “N”.

In instances where publishing data might identify an individual student, this has been suppressed for data protection reasons, and fields populated with “DP” instead.

If you have queries relating to the data please contact quality.office@nscd.ac.uk