Warwick to lead study into improving university outreach

Commissioned by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA), the study aims to improve understanding of the impact of outreach on access to higher education for students from disadvantaged groups and to improve evaluation practice across the sector. Comprising researchers from the University of Warwick and the University of York, the team will set out the principles underlying 'good' evaluation and develop protocols designed to enable institutions to evaluate the effectiveness of their own outreach schemes. These will be informed by the diversity of current practice within the sector and will be suitable for use by all institutions and applicable irrespective of the current stage of development or implementation of their outreach schemes. The team, led by Dr Claire Crawford of the University of Warwick's Department of Economics, is a partnership between academic researchers and those involved directly in the development and delivery of outreach programmes, and will be supported by a number of partner organisations. Discussing her hopes for the project, Dr Crawford said "Universities are spending a growing amount of time and resources trying to encourage more disadvantaged students to access higher education. But the evidence on whether these efforts have succeeded is woefully thin. This project offers an opportunity to better understand 'what works' in terms of outreach initiatives.