Predictably, the Office for Students (OfS) updated regulatory guidance for higher education providers to produce their access and participation plans (APP) maintains a strong emphasis on evaluation.
John Blake praises the early submitting providers in “Wave 1” for investing in evaluation by hiring evaluation specialists and training staff in evaluation. This is something I have observed in my role as Co-Director of HEAT.
In particular, I have witnessed the trend for providers to appoint new staff, or deploy existing staff, to oversee the evaluation of their whole APP. This role is often known as the “APP Evaluation Manager”, although titles vary.
These APP evaluators have tough jobs, and arguably, are some of the most pressured among us as they are responsible for planning, and then delivering, the evaluation of all interventions listed within their institution’s APP.
This covers an enormous scheme of work that is often taking place in different departments, involving numerous staff, all of whom may be using separate systems to record data.
APP evaluators must ensure that data for all these interventions are being collected and recorded consistently, so that they can eventually be used to show impact and, ultimately, translated into evidence that satisfies OfS.
