Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The Deputy Principal and the Xxxx of Higher Education and Curriculum Innovation are responsible for the delivery and monitoring of this Access Agreement. Monitoring and evaluation of progress against the targets related to our outreach activities will be measured using internal data streams and external data sources via UCAS and HESA, and reported through the Higher Education Strategy Group and Senior Management Team, and ultimately to the College Governors.14 As part of our existing management processes, data will be attributed to each and every activity covered by this agreement and will be collected through two routes: feedback from participants in specific events and student consultation. Both sets of data will be collated throughout the year and reported through the College’s management structure to ensure that evaluation is embedded in the College’s strategies. This will ensure that evidence will continue to be used to shape future policy decisions and that the activities can be evaluated for their effectiveness in supporting disadvantaged and underrepresented groups, and if it is found there are any gaps in performance of these demographics, particularly in they do not align with the remainder of the cohort, measures can be, and will be taken to address any differences. Evaluation of progress against the targets will feed into the College’s Equality and Diversity Annual Report and action planning to help prioritise the most effective activities and initiatives. The action plans, will include, but not be limited to, increased oversight, re-allocation of resources such as staff (both teaching and support personnel) and facilities, and the determination of more effective metrics which will allow the earlier identification of any attainment gaps. 14 As noted earlier: HE Strategy Group and College governance includes student representation 14 Outreach activities At the time of producing this Access Agreement, the College is committed to collecting data about, monitoring, evaluating and continuing with all of the following outreach activities. Outreach Activity Aim(s) Target Group(s ) Outputs/Results Measure(s) of Success/Failure/Impact. Liaison work with local schools To raise aspirations and understanding of HE in school-age students to support the raising of attainment levels to maximise opportunities for progression. Teenage students in schools, sixth forms and other colleges within Solihull College’s catchment area, targeting in particular the aspira...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 7.1 Annually, the University reports to the Office for Fair Access, OFFA, in its Annual Monitoring Report. This includes all expenditure from additional fee income on financial support for lower income students and other under- represented groups and reports progress against objectives and milestones.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. Monitoring of the targets and milestones identified within this Access Agreement is incorporated within the University’s operational and strategic reporting, which ensures that this important area of work is considered appropriately within our decision-making. As a result, performance data on progress against these targets are used by the University Board, Academic Board and its sub- committees, the Senior Leadership Team, Colleges, Schools and Services, as well as by the University’s Access Agreement Working Group. Our Access Agreements are monitored through reports to the university’s Student Experience Committee, which is a sub-committee of Academic Board and is chaired by the Deputy Vice- Chancellor (Academic). The Students’ Union is represented on this Committee. Overall responsibility for the Access Agreement resides with our Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). The detailed work to develop our Access Agreements and coordinate evaluation of the impact of work in this area is undertaken by a working group, which is chaired by our Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic). This group includes representatives of university services responsible for the operational delivery of the activities described and the Students’ Union. We are continuing to enhance our ability to monitor impacts at the more detailed level, through arrangements to track the progress of students involved in specific initiatives or in receipt of financial support and overall monitoring of any differentials in levels of access, retention, attainment and progression by equality characteristics and other factors known to impact on these aspects of the student lifecycle. As part of this, we are committed to using the ‘closing the gap’ methodology recently developed for OFFA, to ensure that we understand the impact of our financial support arrangements on the success of those of our students who benefit. To date, we have already undertaken significant evaluation of the impact of our financial support and this has led to a complete change in our approach. As referred to in the Financial Support section, above, we have now focused all our financial support on incentivising progression and we require all students in receipt of additional payments to identify how this funding has benefitted them – overwhelmingly these case studies report that such funding makes it possible for them to continue their studies. The primary group of students applying for additional support are parents and others with caring ...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The Access Agreement, Widening Participation Strategy and WPSA will be monitored through the strategic plan and annual operating statement and through annual reports to the Senior Management Team. Regular reports will also be made to the University College’s Learning Enhancement subcommittee which has a particular responsibility for learning enhancement and student achievement. The Senior Management Team and the University College Council annually review HESA student data, including the performance tables for widening participation. The Fees and Financial Support Group and the department of Student Support will also play a key role in monitoring activities. Evaluation will take place across the Widening Participation themes and stages of the student lifecycle outlined in the Access Agreement and detailed in the WP Strategy. The University College has recently developed a WP database which is linked to its Unit-E student records system. The rationale behind this decision is recognition of the need to evaluate effectively the impact of future WP activities. This will enable analysis of evaluation questionnaires, including quantitative and qualitative data, attitudinal and shifts in perception and longitudinal studies. These methodologies will enable the University College to track future WP students throughout their student lifecycle and will be monitored regularly by the WP team. The University College will evaluate the impact of WP activity through a number of means and WP activity will be reviewed regularly alongside the new WP strategy and Action Plan. The University College will assess the outcome of outreach work with young people in schools and colleges contrasting both target schools and those with whom there is a special relationship, e.g. where the University College sponsors an Academy School. It will be included in the First Impressions survey, the post induction student survey, to ascertain the nature and extent of previous contact with the UC through outreach activity. Further work will look at adding an additional data field to application and enrolment forms to capture such information. The intention will be to also monitor the performance of students recruited as a result of WP activities. Progression and retention statistics will be monitored as will impact of support measures through the annual programme monitoring and business planning processes. Differing methodologies will be used to assess the impact of interventions, such as questionn...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The widening participation agenda, retention rates and success across the student lifecycle are overseen by the University’s Student Access and Progress Committee. The Committee chaired by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and with representation from the Guild of Students, receives and considers regular reports and analysis of institutional performance in a range of areas (such as continuation rates, student equality benchmarks, HESA performance Indicators, student experience surveys, outreach activity evaluation, etc.). In addition, the University Education Committee, also chaired by the Pro-Vice-Chancellor (Education) and with representation from the Guild, receives an annual progress report, approves WPSA and OFFA reporting and considers the annual report from the Academic Skills Centre. Within the University’s Outreach team there is a dedicated Officer with specific responsibility for evaluation; this post works closely with Outreach Officers and with Aimhigher on the evaluation of activities. The Outreach Evaluation Strategy for 2015-2018 supports our commitment to evidence-based practice in widening participation and outreach, and to facilitating a culture of learning and continuous improvement. We are committed to generating evidence-based information from timely and robust evaluations to inform and support our outreach work. The overall aim of the Evaluation Strategy is to provide a framework for producing high quality evidence-based monitoring and evaluation information to support learning, improvement, innovation, accountability and strategic decision-making. The key objectives of the strategy are to: Support the generation of evaluation evidence to improve fair access to higher education by: o Understanding what we do; o Identifying what approaches work in promoting fair access and social mobility; o Identifying where we can improve to increase the effectiveness of our widening participation policies and interventions; and o Supporting strategic decision making and allocation of resources. Provide direction on our approach to evaluation to ensure information generated is robust, relevant and useful Provide a framework for future evaluations and linking them to strategic decision-making by setting out the key focus areas for evaluations and the main evaluation questions they will seek to address Provide a plan for outreach evaluations over the next 3 years, which will be reviewed and updated annually. We have a comprehensive evaluation...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 7.1 The University will continue its policy of making admissions statistics publicly available, through the University of Cambridge Reporter and its web-site. Those statistics include data on the number of applications and acceptances by school type, region, gender, ethnicity and socio-economic classification.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The Pro Director (Learning and Teaching) is the senior manager with ultimate responsibility for access and widening participation. SOAS’ commitment to access is further supported by faculties and departments through the planning, implementation and monitoring of various measures, particularly in relation to retention, progression and collaboration. Performance in widening participation and access are monitored by the Academic Development Committee chaired by the Pro-Director (Learning and Teaching) and are also considered by the External Relations Committee (chaired by the Registrar and Secretary) and the Student Experience Committee (chaired by the Xxxx (Languages and Cultures) and, at the highest level, discussed at Academic Board and Governing Body. All areas of SOAS have a responsibility to support widening participation and fair access. The core SOAS Widening Participation Team is based in the Academic Development Directorate (ADD). The team works extensively with the Student Recruitment and Admissions Office, Faculty Offices (Languages and Culture, Law and Social Sciences, and Arts and Humanities), Registry and Student Services and the Students’ Union on issues of access, admissions’ criteria, student support and retention. The implementation of this access agreement will be supported by all these areas. The body responsible for the delivery of the Access Agreement is the OFFA Steering Group comprised of; Pro- Director (Learning and Teaching), Registrar and Secretary, Xxxx of Law and Social Sciences, Director of Finance and Planning, Director of Academic Development and Head of Widening Participation. This group reports to the Director of SOAS. An action plan will be developed, in collaboration with the Students Union, to support the implementation of the Access Agreement and this will be monitored by the Steering Group. The Director of Academic Development will be responsible for delivering the action plan reporting to the Pro Director (Learning and Teaching). A Working Group comprises of key staff working on areas relating to access, student success and finance will provide advice and feedback on the progress of implementation.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. In addition to Xxxxxx’x internal measures of retention and HESA data, Xxxxxx also participates in the ‘back on course’ project which recognises that sometimes, despite an institution’s best efforts, students will leave, but the project will maximise the former students’ chances of a positive outcome, including the possibility of a return to higher education. Secondly, the data collected for the research will contribute to monitoring and evaluation, giving the sector an insight into the measures that an institution can take to improve performance further. Within the management structure the retention targets will be monitored by the Learning and Teaching Committee, whilst performance in relation to recruitment of under- represented groups will be evaluated by the Equality and Diversity Committee. Records and evaluations of all IAG events attended will be kept and monitoring of applications and acceptances from these institutions will be used to evaluate their effectiveness. Provision of information to prospective students Information will be made available on Xxxxxx’x, UCAS and SLC websites, Xxxxxx’x Facebook page will include finance information and a Q&A section relating to fees and support. A financial information booklet will be produced and sent to all enquirers and local schools. Table 5 - Milestones and targets Table 5a - Statistical milestones and targets relating to your applicants, entrants or student body (e.g. HESA, UCAS or internal targets) Please select milestone/target type from the drop down menu Description (500 characters maximum) Baseline Baseline year data Yearly milestones/targets (numeric where possible, however you may use text) 2012-13 2013-14 2014-15 2015-16 2016-17 Commentary on your milestones/targets or textual description where numerical description is not appropriate (500 characters maximium) NS-SEC (location adjusted) (HESA Table T1a) 2009/10 0.466 41 42 44 45 46 Maintaining Xxxxxx’x excellent record in recruiting students from under-represented groups is likely to be a challenge in the next few years, if, as predicted, a proportion of this student population are deterred from attending university by higher tuition fees. For this reason we expect the proportion of students from low participation neighbourhoolds and from social classes 4,5,6, & 7 to decline slightly from their current high levels, before returning to current levels towards the end of the forecast period. However Xxxxxx remains committed to supporting access to ...
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. 93. The University is employing the services of its Centre for Evaluation and Monitoring (CEM) to undertake evaluation and monitoring. The Centre, which works with schools nationally, has access to very large quantities of relevant background data against which to evaluate the University’s access measures. The University is also collaborating in a research project to evaluate the retention benefits of bursaries.
Monitoring and evaluation arrangements. The University will be monitoring annually the composition of its full-time home undergraduate population, using a range of internal and external WP indicators. Monitoring will be undertaken by the University Planning Office, and data will be regularly viewed by the appropriate individuals and committees across the University.
