Kush Digital College exists to open higher education to people who have been shut out of it. This statement sets out our commitment to widening access and equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds and under-represented groups, the practical ways we pursue it, and how we hold ourselves to account.
We publish it under condition A2 of the Office for Students’ regulatory framework. We are registered in the Approved category and charge tuition fees at or below the basic amount, so this is a statement of our commitments, plans and approach rather than a regulated access and participation plan. We review and republish it every year.
As a new provider preparing to teach our first students, our immediate priority is access — helping people reach higher education who could otherwise not. Once students are with us, their success and progression are supported through our wider academic and student-support arrangements, and we will say more about those as our provision matures.
Our students come from communities whose route into higher education has been narrowed by conflict, displacement, poverty, gender-based restriction, disability, or the breakdown of national education systems. We teach online across the United Kingdom, the Middle East, North Africa, East Africa and the Gulf, and most of the people we serve live far from any campus that could admit them.
Because our students are drawn largely from outside the United Kingdom, we identify disadvantage using measures that fit the communities we serve, while remaining attentive to United Kingdom indicators such as POLAR and the Index of Multiple Deprivation for our UK-based learners. What matters to us is not which index applies, but whether a capable student is being kept out of education by circumstances they cannot change.
We welcome applications from anyone who meets our entry requirements. We direct our scholarships, flexible admission and additional support towards the groups most likely to be kept out:
| Group | What we help them overcome |
|---|---|
|
Students in financial hardship |
Being unable to meet tuition and the hidden costs of study — chiefly a device and data.
|
|
Refugees and displaced learners |
Lost documentation, interrupted study, and exclusion from or unaffordable fees at host-country universities.
|
|
Conflict-affected learners without refugee status |
Disrupted schooling and closed institutions, without access to refugee-specific support. |
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Women in deprived or conservative communities |
Restrictions on mobility and safety, caring responsibilities, and the deprioritising of girls’ education where resources are scarce. |
|
Students with disabilities |
Inaccessible platforms and institutions, scarce assistive technology, stigma, and under-identification. |
|
Orphans |
The absence of financial and advocacy support, often alongside early caring responsibilities. |
|
Adult returners (aged 35 and over) |
Outdated or incomplete records, competing work and family commitments, and limited prior exposure to online study. |
|
Able students from disadvantaged backgrounds |
Strong potential blocked by cost, displacement, or the lack of a viable local route. |
Everything below is designed to remove a barrier that would otherwise stop a capable student from taking part. Some of it is already built into how we work; some we put in place from our first intake. We are clear about which is which.
How our model already helps
Our platform is built mobile-first and for low-bandwidth conditions, so that a student can study from a phone, without reliable broadband, and without travelling to or relocating for a campus — a requirement that, for many of our students, is unaffordable, unsafe, or not permitted. We design for accessibility from the outset, on Universal Design for Learning principles, so that disabled students are not left to ask for adjustments after the fact. We teach in English and provide academic-language support for students whose first language is Arabic, and we provide our admissions information and guidance in both English and Arabic, so that language is not itself a barrier to applying.
What we do to support our students
From our first intake we operate the following measures, each aimed at a barrier a student would otherwise face alone:
| A barrier a student faces | What we do to help |
|---|---|
|
Cannot afford tuition, or a device and data |
Scholarships and hardship support covering tuition and the hidden costs of study, including device loans and subsidised data through a Digital Support Fund.
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|
Has lost transcripts or certificates |
Recognition of prior learning and contextual admission, with verification through community and humanitarian partners where formal records cannot be produced.
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Cannot study safely or leave home |
Safe, home-based online study; scholarships reserved for women in the relevant contexts; mentoring; and engagement with families and communities. |
|
Has a disability that institutions overlook |
Accessible design as standard, assistive technology through the Digital Support Fund, and adjustments to teaching and assessment. |
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Has no settled residency or fee status |
Flexible admission that does not turn on residency or fee-status categories. |
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Has been out of education for years |
Bridging and preparatory modules that offer a structured way back into study. |
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Cannot find clear information |
Clear admissions guidance in English and Arabic, offered directly and through partner organisations that reach learners outside conventional recruitment channels. |
These barriers rarely act alone — a single displaced student may face several at once — and our support is designed to be combined. For women in conservative or unsafe contexts, home-based study, reserved scholarships, mentoring and community engagement work together where financial support alone would not. For students with disabilities, we treat accessibility as a design requirement rather than an adjustment made after the fact. Where we work with NGOs, refugee agencies and humanitarian organisations, those relationships help us reach learners who would otherwise remain outside any recruitment pipeline.
We are a new provider, and we will not publish participation figures we cannot yet stand behind. From our first higher education intake we will establish baselines, set measurable access targets against them, monitor our progress, and report it each year — in an annual access report, with a public summary on this website. We will break down what we monitor by priority group, gender, disability and region.
| Access indicator | How we will measure it | Forward target |
|---|---|---|
|
Entrants in financial hardship |
Verified low-income status at admission |
≥ 30% of entrants |
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Refugees and displaced learners
|
Status verified through asylum records or partner confirmation |
Rising toward 30% by 2028 |
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Women among our entrants |
Share of entrants who are women |
Parity (50%) by 2028 |
|
Students with disabilities |
Disclosed disability at admission |
Rising toward 12% by 2028 |
|
Take-up of digital support |
Device or data support provided to eligible students |
≥ 70% of those in hardship |
|
Digital-readiness induction |
Completed within the set period after enrolment |
≥ 90% |
These are forward commitments, not current attainment. We will review them once our first intake gives us a baseline, and adjust them openly if the evidence shows they should change.
Governance and annual review
Responsibility for this statement rests with our Governing Body, which approves it, reviews our progress against the indicators above, and directs action where we fall short. A designated access and participation lead carries day-to-day responsibility, working with admissions, scholarships and student support, and our Academic Council oversees how access commitments are built into admission, course design and assessment. We review and republish this statement every year, informed by what our students tell us, and sooner if our circumstances or the Office for Students’ guidance change.
As we grow from our first cohort, we will widen our attention from access alone to the whole of the student journey — continuation, attainment, and progression into work or further study — and we will report against the targets above as real data becomes available. We expect to learn from our first students and to refine this approach in light of what we find. Our commitment stays constant: to keep removing the barriers that stand between capable people and an education in which they can succeed.