Contextual admissions

Background

Many Course Centres are considering developing contextual recruitment processes. This is based on evidence that contextualising individuals' achievements using additional information about their educational, social and economic background can lead to fairer and more inclusive selection processes. In particular, this information could help Course Centres to recognise individuals with strong potential for success at doctoral level and within the profession, who otherwise might not have been identified.

The Clearing House has been asked to collect Contextual Admissions information from clinical psychology applicants. The Group of Trainers in Clinical Psychology have agreed the questions, which have evidence for improving the inclusivity and equity of recruitment processes.

How the data is used

All the questions in the Contextual Admissions page of your Application have a Prefer Not to Say option. However, if you can answer any of these questions to provide additional background about you, we encourage you to do so.

The information you provide may be used:

1. by Course Centres as part of their selection processes
2. by Course Centres and the Clearing House for audit, research and service enhancement e.g. to consider developments to selection processes in future years
3. by Course Centres and the Clearing House to create monitoring statistics and reports for themselves, for reporting data as required by relevant public bodies, and for possible publication in anonymised form

Please see each Course Centre's own website for up-to-date information about how the data you provide will be used by them.

• Please see the Courses section for links to each Course Centre's website

Postcodes and POLAR

We ask you for your home UK postcode when you were age 17. We compare this with the national POLAR data produced by the Office for Students about the participation of young people in higher education.

Individual Course Centres may use postcodes for comparison with other similar databases on socio-economic background e.g. at a more local level.

• Please see the Office for Students website if you need more information about POLAR