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Success for our students

Success for our students, supporting them to achieve their goals, whoever and wherever they are, with outcomes that are equitable and open up new opportunities in life and work.

Our students and learners have their own personal goals and motivations and their own ideas about what success looks like, which may stay the same or change during their studies or after a break from study. We will support our students and learners with their aspiration to succeed defined on their own terms, listening to and acting on the student voice.

Our aim is to see even more of our students and learners succeed and progress. We want everyone to leave the OU with greater confidence and with knowledge and skills which prepare them for future employment, career progression, further lifetime study and a life beyond the OU. We will welcome all our students after they complete their study to our alumni community, where there will be many ways in which they can support new generations of students, and will welcome many back to further study.

We aim to provide a journey which is flexible and personalised, and which reflects and anticipates the diverse needs of different groups of students, prioritising where we need to improve equity in access, progression and awards where this is due to policies or practices that are unfair or cause unjust disadvantages.

Over the next five years we will:

  • continuously improve our student-facing services at every step in their journey, from registration and induction to study advice and career guidance, achieving both improvements across the student body and closing targeted gaps, prioritising where the gaps are largest, and demonstrating these improvements each year with data reporting on progress.
  • strengthen the sense of community among our students, enhancing how they feel welcomed, supported and heard, including communicating effectively how we have responded to feedback. 
  • continue to evaluate and develop our course design, tuition and assessment practices, providing even better value to students, improving our effectiveness in achieving learning gain and progression, and eliminating inequities where they are unjust or unintended.
  • design our courses to be truly inclusive and accessible to as many students as possible by reducing reliance on specially produced materials.