Conclusion
A loose comparison group approach identified statistically significantly higher KS4 attainment (higher proportion of pupils achieving standard and strong passes in English and Maths), for FSM participants in the KS4 2021 exam cohort. In particular, statistically significant higher attainment was found for those with ‘average’ prior attainment at KS2, in both the HEP and the UCP cohorts, compared to FSM pupils who did not engage in attainment-raising outreach. This finding is particularly encouraging for outreach engagement of FSM pupils, a group at significant risk of equality of opportunity.
HEPs have been tasked to implement into Access and Participation Plans, and deliver, pre-16 attainment-outreach since 2019/20, with an increased focus since 2022. The results of our analysis show that, even though the cohort in this report had not yet had much exposure to attainment-raising activity under this new policy focus, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are benefiting from outreach provision designed to, directly and indirectly, raise attainment.
UCPs did not have a specific focus on raising students’ attainment at the time the students in this analysis were engaged in outreach. It is, nonetheless, promising to see a positive impact of UC delivery on KS4 attainment, even when the focus of delivery at the time was on targeted and strategic outreach. This suggests that activities designed to support students to make informed decisions about their future, may already be having a positive impact on their KS4 attainment.
The differences in KS4 attainment between participants and non-participants for both the HEP and the UCP cohort appear to have been driven by learners with ‘average’ attainment at KS2, which represented about half of the students engaged in outreach. Pupils with ‘low’ attainment at KS2 who participated in attainment-raising outreach between Year 7 and Year 11 did not experience the same attainment uplift observed for those of ‘average’ prior attainment. ‘Low’ prior attainers may have a much longer ‘distance to travel’, and they may be in need of attainment-raising outreach sooner than their peers with higher prior attainment. The support they require may also be different when compared to higher attaining students, suggesting that the attainment-raising outreach delivered to this cohort may have not been equally suited to the different prior attainment groups.
Analysis of the cohort participating in attainment-raising outreach also provided some insights in the targeting of attainment-raising activities. Across both HEP and UCP cohorts, the majority of all learners engaged in attainment-raising outreach had ‘average’ or ‘low’ prior attainment at KS2. Less than one-quarter had obtained ‘high’ prior attainment at KS2. This shows overall effective targeting of outreach by HEAT member providers to those students most at risk of failing to achieve at KS4.
In particular, we found that UCPs have, both in relative and in absolute terms, engaged more learners in ‘low’ and ‘average’ prior attainment bands. Arguably, these are the learners most in need of support with their attainment. This is not a new finding, and, as discussed in previous research by HEAT on targeting of attainment-raising outreach (HEAT, 2022), HEPs may engage lower proportions of learners with lower prior attainment because they are incentivised to recruit disadvantaged learners through their Access and Participation Plan ‘recruitment’ targets. UCPs may have greater freedom to carefully target those learners who are less likely to progress but are most in need of support with raising attainment at school.
Uni Connect is reaching the most educationally disadvantaged learners, which HEP may not reach on their own, and there is an evident concern that these learners will likely miss out without targeted initiatives such as Uni Connect. With the scaling down of Uni Connect funding, there is a danger that we may see opportunities for learners with lower prior attainment decline in the future.
The findings of this analysis support an association of taking part in attainment-raising outreach and improved KS4 attainment, in particular for FSM learners with ‘average’ prior attainment, which can be classed as Type 2, empirical evidence (OfS, 2019).
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