Lee Elliot Major: Evaluating the impact of widening participation initiatives

Universities need to rigorously evaluate and monitor the outcomes of their access work – or risk failing the students they are trying to help. The Sutton Trust’s Lee Elliot Major advocates for a more evidence-based approach.

It is nothing short of a scandal that the vast majority of work in our universities and colleges aimed at opening doors to students from low and middle income homes is not evaluated properly. We spend over £1 billion a year on programmes to widen participation and broaden access into our academic elites; yet we know very little about what impact most of these efforts are having. Well-intentioned efforts to aid social mobility – from school outreach programmes to financial support for students – are effectively operating in the dark, uninformed by any hard evidence of what has worked before.

The problem has come to light again with the release of a report for the Higher Education Funding Council for England(Hefce) which “found little evidence that impact is being systematically evaluated by institutions”. Previous reports have revealed a lack of even the most basic monitoring of data and outcomes across the sector, prompting the English funding council to issue guidance on evaluation.

The national strategy unveiled by Hefce and the Office for Fair Access (Offa) meanwhile has recommended a light-touch network of regional coordinators to facilitate collaboration between universities and schools. This sounds suspiciously like ‘AimHigher light’- a slim-line version of the previous national outreach programme in England. AimHigher was cut in the last Whitehall spending review due to lack of evidence of its impact. A lot of good work was undermined by the absence of hard data.

Read his full column here.