Launch of Students with Disabilities Engaged with Support Services in Higher Education in Ireland 2024/25 Report

AHEAD are delighted to launch our report on Students with Disabilities Engaged with Support Services in Higher Education in Ireland for the academic period 2024/25. AHEAD has been researching the participation rates of students with disabilities in higher education for the past 34 years. 

AHEAD welcomes the steady rise of the number of students with disabilities in higher education identified through this research. In the academic year of 2024/25 students registered with disability support services represented 8.7% of the total student population of the responding higher education institutions. Over the last sixteen years, AHEAD’s research has identified that the number of students in higher education engaging with the disability services has risen by 416% (4,853 in 08/09 to 25,025 in 24/25).

This research has developed due to the continuous support of the Higher Education Authority, as part of their ongoing efforts to promote equal opportunities in higher education in Ireland. AHEAD would also like to recognise the consistent support of disability support services of higher education institutions who supply the data that informs this important research.

Access the full Report

Access the Summary and Recommendations

There were a number of key findings and recommendations which AHEAD identified as part of this year’s report which are summarised below;

Summary of Key findings

• Increase of 416% in the number of students with disabilities registered with disability support services in higher education institutions in the last sixteen years, now standing at 25,025.
• A significant percentage of new entrants have a disability but do not disclose and register for support. Data from the HEA Equal Access Survey reports that 20.9% of new entrant undergraduates disclose at least one disability, our research finds that 12.3% of new entrant undergraduates registered with their disability support service.
• The postgraduate participation rate is rising steadily, but disabled students remain significantly underrepresented in postgraduate study, at 3.5% of the total postgraduate cohort.
• Almost 1 in 8 students registered with services not eligible for the Fund for Students with Disabilities (FSD).

 

"The system needs to accept evidence beyond the strict FSD parameters, accept the professional judgement of DSS." Disability Support Staff Member talking about FSD Limitations.

• Disabled students were significantly more likely to be enrolled on a course in the field of Arts and Humanities. Disabled students are relatively overrepresented in this field, at 20% compared to 12.7% within the general student population.
• The ratio of students with disabilities per support staff member remains high at 154 students per staff member, representing a 59% increase since the academic year 2012/3.

 

“Adequately staffed disability support services with streamlined processes for 
requesting and implementing reasonable accommodations are essential to putting 
supports in place for the rising number of students with disabilities.” Disability Support Staff Member talking about sustainable responses to the rising ratio of disabled students per support staff.

Summary of Recommendations

Each recommendation has associated actions, time scales and stakeholders mapped out in both the summary report and the full report.

• AHEAD recommend that the forthcoming Disability Demonstration Project should incorporate a review of the models of disability support provision in FET and HE, including the associated support staffing and funding streams, to ensure effective support provision is maintained as numbers of disabled students rise.
• Utilising a change management approach, national stakeholders led by DFHERIS should collaborate to develop national/ institutional structures and incentives which develop a ‘whole of system’ approach to embedding Universal Design (UD) in Tertiary Education.
• Greater flexibility to national funded PhD models should be introduced and add criteria to ensure HEIs award more funded PhD opportunities to disabled scholars, in order to increase representation in postgraduate study.
• Greater SUSI funding support should be provided for students to access flexible learning modes such as online and part-time study, in order to address the underrepresentation of disabled students in these modes.

 

Access the full Report

Access the Summary and Recommendations

A Note on Accessibility

We have endeavored to make the PDF documents linked above as accessible as possible by incorporating a hierarchical structure using tags, providing alt text for graphs and images (and providing key data in body text) and tagging decorative images as artifacts. In the event that you are still experiencing issues reading this document with screen reading software or other assistive technologies, please contact ahead@ahead.ie to request an alternative version.