Data-driven study shows attainment gaps impacted by conditions and types of assessment

QAA has published the report of a QAA-funded Collaborative Enhancement Project which analysed institutional data to examine the causes of awarding gaps.

This cross-institutional study examined how ethnic attainment patterns in UK higher education responded to changes in assessment design and learning environments before, during and after the COVID-19 pandemic.

The project was led by a team from the University of Sussex in partnership with colleagues from Queen Mary University of London and University College London.

It found that during the pandemic itself ethnic attainment gaps narrowed or disappeared in several contexts, particularly in structured digital timed assessments.

The report's authors have proposed that this convergence suggests that the emergency assessment conditions introduced at the three institutions involved, including greater scaffolding, simplified formats and reduced high-stakes pressure, temporarily lowered structural barriers.

The study then found that when institutions transitioned back to their standard assessment regimes, attainment gaps widened sharply. This divergence was most evident for Black students at all three institutions, reappearing across coursework and final assessments.

The project also found that assessment types played a critical role in attainment gaps. Extended, open-ended formats, such as essays, reports and take-home papers, generated the most pronounced post-COVID disparities, whereas structured timed assessments continued to show smaller or no gaps.

Institutions diverged post-COVID (with some returning to face-to-face exams and others retaining digital formats), yet the equity gains observed during the pandemic were not sustained. This suggests that exceptional pandemic conditions, in addition to assessment formats, may have contributed to the temporary convergence.

The study reported that across all sites, post-COVID performance declined for all ethnic groups, suggesting a broader structural shift, including disrupted pre-university preparation, altered study habits, and post-pandemic pressures such as commuting, cost-of-living constraints, and reduced academic confidence, with intersectional factors reinforcing vulnerability.

The project's results demonstrate that awarding gaps are highly sensitive to assessment design and post-pandemic study conditions, and that equity improved most when assessments were structured, clearly guided, and time-limited, and worsened when open-ended, high-stakes and self-regulated tasks were reintroduced.

"This is a truly important report," said Emma Williams, Membership Quality Specialist at QAA. "I hope that colleagues across the sector will learn from its highly valuable findings."

Project lead Professor Gabriella Cagliesi from the University of Sussex Business School said: "Awarding gaps are not fixed characteristics of students; they respond to assessment design and the conditions under which learning takes place. The pandemic showed that such inequalities can narrow for many students, but without sustained structural change, those gains do not last."