The One in Five campaign wants to see disability recognised as a fundamental part of university admissions

Scottish universities are being urged to make changes to increase the number of disabled students.

The One in Five campaign wants to see disability recognised as a fundamental part of the admissions process.

Only 11.5% of students are identified as disabled, however 20% of the population is considered to have a disability.

Co-founder of One in Five Pam Duncan-Glancy said that the current system is seeing disabled people being left behind.

She said: “University gave me the best chance in life I could have and I want that for more disabled people. The gap between admission rates of disabled and non-disabled people shows we have a way to go.

“By default, we are losing out and we need to fix that by design. Using disability as a contextual criteria on admissions is a way to do this and I hope all universities will consider it.”

The campaign has written to all universities to call for a change in admissions, with only four institutions understood to consider disability as a factor in its contextualised admissions process.

Universities Scotland has said that the amount of full-time students has increased since 2010, but it recognises that the number of disabled students is still relatively low.

A spokeswoman said: “As disability covers a very wide and complex range of physical and mental conditions, it’s very important to work with the individual applicant to understand their circumstances and what support they need, from admissions onwards.

“Scotland’s universities use contextual admissions, including adjusting grades, to widen access for those from deprived backgrounds because there is a very strong and causal link between deprivation and educational attainment. Socio-economic disadvantage is not covered under the equality act, so we are working in different ways to address that.”