5: Putting Theory of Change to Practice: Evaluating a Collaborative Widening Participation Programme

Widening participation (WP) is a complex policy area that has evolved over more than twenty years (Thompson, 2017). The evaluation of WP programmes has also evolved as many researchers and practitioners have grappled with developing and implementing the most suitable approaches to evaluating programme impact (Clements & Short, 2020; Harrison & Waller, 2017; Younger, Gascoine, Menzies, & Torgerson, 2018).

In a bid to expand the WP provision of higher education (HE) providers, in 2017, the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) set up the National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP), currently known as Uni Connect, consisting of twenty-nine consortia of universities, colleges and other local partners based within geographical regions across England.¹ The consortia were tasked with delivering ‘sustained and progressive’ programmes to raise HE progression rates of underrepresented young people living in areas with historically high attainment at key stage 4, but low rates of progression to HE. A requirement of the funding included regional evaluations of consortium's local programmes and an evaluation of the national programme, with an emphasis on developing a Theory of Change (ToC), and the use of experimental or quasi-experimental methods to evaluate impact (HEFCE, 2017; Tazzyman, Bowes, Moreton, Madriaga, & McCaig, 2018). Requirements for evaluation of NCOP reflected the standards of evaluation practice released by the Office for Fair Access (OFFA) (2017), and since 2019, the standards of evidence released by the OfS (2019).¹ For the purposes of this chapter, regional programme is used to describe the collection of activities delivered locally by a single NCOP consortium and national programme is used to describe NCOP at the national level, encompassing the programmes of each NCOP consortium as a whole.