Festive Greetings and HEAT Closure Dates 2025

As we approach the end of 2025, we would like to inform members of our Winter closure dates, and take a moment to reflect on the many exciting developments and projects we have worked towards.

HEAT Service Closure

Our hosts, the University of Kent, will close on Monday 22nd December 2025 to Thursday 1st January 2026 inclusive. The HEAT Service will reopen on Friday 2nd January 2026.

HEAT Support Information

The Helpdesk at HEAT Support will therefore be closing for the holiday period from 3:00 PM on Friday 19th December 2025 and will reopen 9:00AM on Friday 2nd January 2026.

If you have any security concerns during this time, please contact emergency@heat.ac.uk.

Reflecting on 2025

We would like to thank our members for all their engagement over the past year. Your contributions through our specialist working groups, consultations, surveys and feedback has set 2025 as the year which centred collaboration as the key pathway to success when championing equality of opportunity in higher education and beyond. Read our key highlights below.

Collaborative Projects

An important highlight for this year has been our joint venture with TASO to host the new higher education evaluation library (HEEL), which will support the sector to work together to share best practice on a national level. We have been delighted to work with TASO on this essential resource and to deliver the first phase of the project, the HEEL Submission Form, hosted within the HEAT database.

We are also very proud to have won two collaborative bids with our sector partners for the Office for Students Equality in Higher Education Innovation Fund, launching research projects focused on building upon our collective knowledge and resources. The Outreach Metric project with UCL is working to determine the contribution of outreach programmes to higher education progression across the sector, and our second collaborative project, Beyond the Barracks, led by York St John University, aims to improve the evidence base on ‘what works’ when working with Service Children. 

We look forward to updating the membership on the HEEL, Outreach Metric and Beyond the Barracks progress in the new year.

New Online Training

Part of our focus this year was to develop key online training courses to ensure our members are supported in getting the most out of the service and system. Our flagship training course, HEAT Essentials, guides users from any skill level on a structured learning pathway through getting started on the database, the stages of evaluation, reporting on outcomes and evidencing impact.

Our growing suite of online courses can help build capacity and set you and your team up for success. Read more about our available training and our framework on our website.

Sector-Leading Research

A key achievement was the publication of our first Contextualised Higher Education Entry Impact Report, which reveals how intensive outreach makes a measurable difference to progression to higher education, and especially for disadvantaged learners. This report was circulated widely across the sector and the promising findings received positive endorsement by Skills Minister Jacqui Smith in an article published in the Times Higher Education.

Read the full report for detailed findings, analysis, and what is next for this type of impact research on our website.