Raising Awareness, Raising Aspiration

Who is RARA?

RARA is a pilot project led by a diverse coalition of institutions, including The University of Sheffield, King’s College London and The University of Portsmouth. Each is aware of their own attainment gaps and are committed to resolving them. They bring:

• Several institution-wide personal tutoring initiatives, including online platforms to track and enhance student progression and attainment, a series of specific policies and principles, and staff CPD initiatives to improve provision.
• Experience of a range of training and development activities and accreditation frameworks, including several Higher Education Academy assessors and Fellows.
• Extensive research in the Leadership Foundation for Higher Education’s Trust Me! Project, the BME Student Attainment Gap research, and Sheffield Student 2013.
• Experience of monitoring the attainment gap as an institutional Key Performance Indicator.

The lessons, techniques, strategies and tools developed from RARA will be eventually shared with the wider sector, to implement change and narrow the attainment gap on a national scale.