Understanding effective evaluation of the impact of outreach interventions on access to higher education. Phase 2 - AWARD

In August 2016 OFFA commissioned a team of researchers at the University of Warwick to investigate how institutions evaluate their outreach schemes. Their research forms part of a two phase, multi-year project to tackle the complex and challenging question of what constitutes effective evaluation of outreach. This is important because establishing the best ways to evaluate different interventions can contribute to the development of more impactful outreach to support disadvantaged young people to access and fully participate in higher education in England. The Office for Fair Access (OFFA), in partnership with the Department for Education and The Sutton Trust, wish to place a contract for a principal investigator (PI) to coordinate and lead the pilot testing of proposed standards for evaluation practice developed by the University of Warwick in phase one of the project. These standards will underpin different evaluation approaches across a range of outreach interventions to encourage disadvantaged young people to enter and succeed in university. This will lead to a set of useable and transferable standards of evaluation practice, guidance about different approaches to evaluation and evidence about which type of outreach interventions can have the greatest impact in different geographic and institutional settings. This will enable universities to improve their understanding and evaluation of the impact of outreach on access to higher education for people from disadvantaged and under-represented backgrounds. The contract is for phase two of the project, to run from August 2017 to September 2018. This tender is being run by HEFCE on behalf of OFFA.