Higher education plays a vital role in helping millions of students develop their talents and achieve their potential. Everyone should have the opportunity 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 disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. We want to see the sector equipped to make evidence-informed decisions to help students access, succeed in, and progress from higher education.
Building the evidence base
We aim to develop more robust, causal evidence about widening access and improving student outcomes in higher education. Through our research and evaluation, we want to develop a better understanding of which activities cause better outcomes for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.
We support the development of robust evidence by:
- developing and providing evaluation guidance and resources
- commissioning evaluations of interventions designed to reduce equality gaps in higher education, and publishing the methodology and results of the evaluations
- commissioning or developing evidence syntheses
- delivering evaluation training to practitioners and evaluators.
Guidance and resources
TASO guidance and resources include explainers, research-methodology guidance, tools and templates to help you design, implement and report on evaluations.
The Monitoring and Evaluation Framework (MEF) guides our approach to evaluation – diagnosis, planning, measurement and reflection, beginning with a robust theory of change.
Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tools (MOATs) provide practitioners and evaluators with a typology to consistently categorise pre-entry and post-entry activities and links to suggested outcome measures such as our Access and Success Questionnaire (ASQ).
Our data infrastructure guide includes a flowchart to help you choose an evaluation design – randomised controlled trials, quasi-experimental or theory-based methods – to assess the effectiveness of your intervention.
All quantitative impact evaluations should be accompanied by an implementation and process evaluation to help understand how and why an intervention works (or doesn’t), for whom and in what context.
We provide templates to help you effectively design, specify and report your planned evaluation.
Commissioning evaluations
We commission flagship evaluation projects, providing funding to pair an independent evaluator with a higher education provider. They work together to evaluate the impact of interventions designed to support access, success or participation in higher education.
We commission evaluations using a wide-range of methodologies including randomised controlled trials, for example, analytics-prompted interventions. When random allocation is not possible, we use quasi-experimental designs for interventions targeted at a large number of students – for example, interventions to reduce the ethnicity degree awarding gap. All evaluations are always accompanied by an implementation and process evaluation. We also work with interventions targeted at small numbers of students using theory-based methods.
Synthesising evidence
We commission and carry out evidence synthesis and data analysis projects to provide the sector with evidence to inform intervention development. This supports higher education providers to design more effective, evidence-based interventions.
Our evidence toolkits synthesise existing evidence on the effectiveness of common approaches to addressing equality gaps in higher education.
Our data analysis projects provide insights into the experiences of disadvantaged and underrepresented groups in higher education and beyond. Previous projects have included the following topics:
- Pathways into and through higher education for young people with experience of children’s social care
- Student mental health in 2024: How the situation is changing for LGBTQ+ students
- Education pathways: Equality gaps in earnings and employment
Read more about our evidence synthesis and data analysis work on the projects page.
Evaluation training
Our friendly research team regularly delivers evaluation training to practitioners and evaluators in higher education providers. We offer regular paid-for training sessions open to the whole sector and deliver bespoke training sessions tailored to the needs of specific providers.
We offer training on a range of topics, including:
- Theory of change
- Introduction to evaluation
- Randomised controlled trials and quasi-experimental impact evaluation designs
- Theory-based evaluation methods suitable for small cohorts
- Implementation and process evaluation
- Data visualisation
Find out more about events and training, and about our bespoke training, offering tailored support to help you evaluate the impact of your work.
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.