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- UCL and HEAT: Pioneering a new Outreach Metric (with the Sector for the Sector)
We are delighted to announce UCL and HEAT have been successful in a collaborative application for funding from the Office for Students Equality in Higher Education Innovation Fund. Read more about the project’s initiatives, outputs and timelines.
This project will provide new insights into the coverage and effectiveness of widening participation outreach programmes designed to support young people from disadvantaged backgrounds to access higher education (HE).
While individual providers already evaluate their activities, this initiative seeks to measure their broader contribution to reducing socio-economic gaps in HE participation. The research will capture students who benefit from outreach but choose a different provider, recognising this as a success for both the delivering provider and the sector as a whole.
Project Summary
Overseen by a Project Steering Group of stakeholders from across the sector, the project will involve the linkage and analysis of data from multiple large datasets. HEAT will coordinate the project, leveraging its extensive experience as a national tracking database and collaborating with regional trackers – EMWPREP and Aimhigher West Midlands – to enhance data coverage for students who have participated in outreach programmes across England.
Data from all three tracking services will be further linked with national administrative datasets such as the National Pupil Database and HESA undergraduate record. The linkage of these datasets for the first time will facilitate the largest analysis of data on outreach activity to date in England.
Led by researchers at UCL, the analysis will be designed to offer providers new insights into the extent to which their outreach facilitates HE access across the whole sector, how well their current interventions are targeted, and which of their activities appear to be the most effective at supporting progression to HE. This robust evidence will support the development of practice and improvements in efficacy.
Data analysis will be undertaken by Dr Paul Martin and Professor Claire Crawford at the Centre for Education Policy and Equalising Opportunities (CEPEO) at the UCL Institute of Education. The project team will ensure that a range of providers can feed into the design of the metric.
The project will culminate in dissemination throughout the sector including a wider network of interested stakeholders by Summer 2026.
Project Activities and Outputs
- Link data from multiple sources to create a complete dataset on outreach participation and educational outcomes in England
- Design a methodology meeting the project aims, that is the most robust possible based on the data available
- Conduct rigorous testing of the methodology
- Produce a range of publicly available outputs, including reports and a webinar
Project Timeline
Officially, this project runs from July 2025 to July 2026 in line with the Office for Students funded bid. In recognition of this tight project timeline, we were eager to start the planning phase before the official start and have already held our first Project Steering Group meeting.
The Project Steering Group has representatives from the HEAT membership as well as from our partners: Aimhigher West Midlands and EMWPREP. We are confident that this group of experts will provide valuable support to the project team. We will also seek support from the HEAT Research Group ensuring that we consult with a wider group.
In March, the group met to ratify the project timeline and provide feedback on the project scope and risks. The project’s investigators: Professor Claire Crawford and Dr Paul Martin from UCL’s CEPEO also discussed the proposed methodology, and we have asked for further input.
Important milestone for the project
Milestone |
Date |
| Submit data request to Department of Education | By end April 2025 |
| Consult with HEAT members regarding data coverage (survey) | By July 2025 |
| Share methodology with wider membership and receive feedback | By July 2025 |
| Submit outreach participant data to the Department for Education* | May – June 2025 |
| Access and analyse linked data in Safe Researcher Setting (provided by Department for Education*) | Sept – Dec. 2025 |
| Prepare and share initial project findings | By end April 2026 |
| Receive feedback on initial findings | By end May 2026 |
| Draft final report | During June 2026 |
| Finalise report and submit to the Office for Students | July 2026 |
| Share final report with membership and stakeholders | Autumn 2026 |
*Department for Education data supply is estimated and subject to change
Sector collaboration and future updates
We are thankful for the goodwill and contribution of all our HEAT colleagues who contribute to this project, it is further evidence of sector collaboration and how together we can continue to innovate and provide solutions for the future.
If you would like to find out more about these timelines or the project please contact HEAT Support. We will update this blog periodically with related news and progress.
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