Office for Students

Our strategy for evidence and evaluation in access and participation

Our vision is that evidence and evaluation is used effectively by the Office for Students (OfS) and higher education providers to drive improvements in equality of opportunity.

What needs to change

We have outlined three core outcomes for the OfS and higher education providers:

Three linked circles. They read: 1. Commit and prioritise, 2. Use evidence to inform and design, 3. Evaluate, generate, share and learn.

Detailed provider outcomes

Outcomes Indicators
Providers commit to and prioritise a culture of evidence to support their work to eliminate inequality in higher education.
  • Providers demonstrate senior-level and strategic commitment to the importance of evidence and evaluation.
  • Providers generate, share and learn from compelling evidence about what works to eliminate inequalities in higher education.
Providers use evidence to understand local and national inequalities, and to design impactful programmes.
  • Providers identify and understand appropriate data about local and national inequalities in higher education and strategically prioritise.
  • Providers articulate coherent aims, objectives and targets for their programmes with appropriate and ambitious measures of success.
  • Providers design programmes that are underpinned by compelling evidence.
Providers evaluate to understand impact, share and learn from evidence
  • Providers design and run evaluations rigorously, appropriate to their context, performance and activities.
  • Providers share evidence from evaluation to raise understanding about what is and is not working well to eliminate inequality in higher education.
  • Providers interpret and learn from evaluation findings.

Detailed OfS outcomes

Outcomes Indicators
The OfS commits to and prioritises a culture of evidence to support its work to eliminate inequality in higher education.
  • The OfS demonstrates senior level and strategic commitment to the importance of evidence and evaluation.
  • The OfS generates, shares and learns from compelling evidence about what works to eliminate inequality in higher education.
  • The OfS interrogates the integrity of evidence to ensure accuracy and relevance.
The OfS uses evidence to understand and respond to national inequalities and to design impactful programmes and funding.
  • The OfS understands appropriate data and local and national inequalities in higher education and strategically prioritises.
  • The OfS ensures that regulation, funding and advice where the primary focus is to eliminate inequality in higher education is informed by compelling evidence.
  • The OfS can articulate coherent aims, objectives and targets for their programmes with appropriate and ambitious measures of success.
The OfS evaluates to understand impact, learn and share high quality evidence.
  • The OfS designs and runs rigorous evaluations in a consistent way.
  • The OfS shares evidence from evaluation to raise understanding about what is and is not working well to eliminate inequality in higher education.
  • The OfS interprets and learns from evaluation findings to improve.

How we will realise our vision

Our strategy places the effective use of evidence and evaluation as central to the transformational change needed to eliminate inequality in higher education. We will:

Flowchart of five stages: 1. Set high expectations, 2. Persuade and advocate, 3. Enable and incentivise, 4. Listen and learn, 5. Embed change
  • Set high expectations and apply pressure where performance isn't strong enough ​
  • Persuade and advocate for using evidence and evaluation
  • Enable providers to make more effective use of evidence and evaluation 
  • Incentivise and support partnerships and innovative practice ​
  • Learn from expertise and lived experiences to understand and find solutions for the challenges we face
  • Embed change within the OfS, in line with our organisational values, to deliver this strategy. 

Evaluation

Read more about our work on evaluation, including toolkits and resources for higher education providers
Published 29 March 2023
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