New Year’s Welcome from HEAT Director

A Year in Review: 2024 Highlights

To recap a few of our achievements over the last year, we have:

• Reviewed our Five Year Strategy (members only) to ensure it is in line with supporting the sector to evaluate their equality of opportunity delivery – with emphasis on meeting Access and Participation Plan requirements
• Visualised the existing HEAT system in our new System Overview diagram, and explained how each part should be used to support evaluation
• Released a new HEAT Track dashboard which contextualises HE Entry with prior attainment at Key Stage 4
• Published analysis of the impact of Uni Connect which Public First used in their report to estimate the economic impact of the Uni Connect programme, quoted by John Blake in his speech on what’s next for equality of opportunity regulation
• Provided Key Stage 4 attainment outcomes to support the membership to evaluate their pre-16 attainment-raising outreach activity by working with the Department for Education
• Continued to support the membership to use HEAT to evaluate their ‘post-entry’ activity, with our first working group planned for January 2025

Launch of the Institution Coverage Data

Following our consultation with the membership, we were delighted to launch the enhanced Institution Coverage data. This provides all HEAT members with information on the types of outreach activities schools and colleges in the UK have received, and which members delivered these activities.

With the Office for Students encouraging providers to work in partnership, the Institution Coverage data supports the membership to collaborate over delivery and evaluation. The new data can be used to identify any overlaps, ensure work complements wider delivery, reduce burden on schools and better inform strategic planning.

This development would not have been possible without our shared commitment to data collection through a single data system.

Value for Money Report

Our sustainability and growth in the current tough climate are testament to the value for money the HEAT Service provides to members.

Our recent Value for Money report (members only) estimated that members receive £9 worth of system, data and tools for every £1 invested. Jisc verified that the costs associated with tracking alone would exceed the whole HEAT subscription if providers were to attempt to do this independently.

We hope this report will help our users, who often tell us how valuable HEAT is to them, explain this tangibly to their senior leaders and budget holders.

HEAT’s Online Training Courses

We have lots in the pipeline for 2025! One project I am particularly excited about is our introduction of online training courses. The HEAT database is comprehensive (as our System Overview diagram shows) and it can be difficult for new users to know where to start.

Our new online courses will be free for all HEAT users, allowing them to work through different modules, to learn about HEAT at their own pace.

To test our software, we have produced an initial course to support users to understand their Key Stage 4 Tracking Data and Dashboard. We have had great feedback on this course so please do take a look using the link above and send us your thoughts.

We now plan to produce a broader online course called ‘HEAT Essentials’, which will guide users through six steps to produce evaluation through HEAT. This course will be ideal for new users and current users wanting to check they are using HEAT from a solid foundation. The HEAT Essentials course will be available in April 2025. Following this we plan to develop ‘Advanced’ courses which will build up, to help users generate more robust evaluation through HEAT by using more of the system.