If you work in access and participation the contents of John Blake’s equality of opportunity risk register (EORR) is already of paramount importance to you, despite not being anywhere near publication.

The Office for Students’ shift to a “risk-based” approach for access and participation planning sees a requirement for providers to act where:

an individual, because of circumstances that the individual did not choose, may have their choices about the nature and direction of their life reduced by the actions or inactions of another individual, organisation or system.

It’s an elegant, if curiously personalised, framing of the challenge of widening participation – the idea of responding to individual circumstances is a noble one, but one that quickly disappears as it becomes clear that we are talking about groups of students with similar characteristics in the traditional way.

However, this is not quite the same as older approaches which took actual (or perceived) underrepresentation as a starting point – there is abundant data, for instance, showing that young people from economically disadvantaged backgrounds do not go to university in the same proportions as their more comfortable peers. What this evidence doesn’t show is whether the impact is directly attributable to low family income, or if it is linked to lower attainment, or certain schools, or alternative aspirations.

OfS has asked Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO), to develop the evidence base that underpins the national EORR. To this end, TASO is asking the sector for research evidence. But not just any research evidence – it needs

Evidence which presents descriptive quantitative analysis of measurable differences in outcomes, rather than qualitative literature on risks.

and

Evidence which relates to differences in outcomes at a national/sector-level (or across multiple providers), which can help us understand risks which emerge at a national level; while we welcome evidence generated at the level of individual providers, if it is included in the review we will primarily use this to contextualise the risk at the national level.

Submitted evidence would be used alongside data from the OfS dashboard, and the nebulous “other OfS data sources” by the regulator in designing the EORR. So, you have the chance to use the best available research evidence to advise the people who will advise the people who make that call. And you have until 23 December to do so.