About

We’re an independent hub for higher education professionals to access research, toolkits and evaluation guidance to eliminate equality gaps.

Our vision

Everyone has the opportunity to access, succeed and thrive in higher education.

Our mission

Our mission is to close equality gaps in higher education by building evidence on what works and by driving the use of evidence-informed practice.

What Works Centre

As an affiliate member of the government’s What Works Network, we focus on developing robust causal evidence, alongside insights from qualitative research.

Higher education plays a vital role in helping millions of students develop their talents and achieve their potential. Everyone should have the option to pursue higher education but there are widespread inequalities in how different groups access, experience and progress beyond higher education. At TASO, we want to see these inequalities eliminated.

To eliminate equality gaps, we need to know what works to support students from underrepresented and disadvantaged backgrounds. We want to see the sector equipped to make evidence-informed decisions which support students to access, succeed in, and progress from higher education. Through research and evaluation, we’re building the evidence base so that more students can thrive and succeed in higher education.

We do this in two ways:

• Generating evidence. We create leading evidence which tells us which initiatives are most effective, for whom, and in which contexts. We share our findings with policy-makers and practitioners so they can act on them.
• Working with the sector. We support and advise higher education providers by giving them guidance and tools to evaluate their interventions in-house. 

TASO was founded in 2019, initially through a consortium of King’s College London, Nottingham Trent University and the Behavioural Insights Team. We have been an independent charity since 2021.

Our work is funded by the Office for Students.