What is it? Aspiration-raising activities consist of interventions carried out by higher education providers (HEPs) to raise students’ aspirations to apply to, and attend, higher education (HE). Some of these activities also aim to improve attainment through raising aspirations. They are commonly combined in a programme of activities delivered as a package over several months.

Evidence?  Overall, while outreach activities designed to raise attainment via aspirations are frequently delivered by HEPs (Anthony, 2019), there is no evidence demonstrating a causal link between activities and outcomes.

Should HEPs adopt it? These programmes can include light-touch activities informing students of how to access HE, as well as large-scale interventions engaging students over a prolonged period, but currently there is no causal evidence demonstrating their impact. Providers should seek to embed evaluation to understand the extent to which their ‘aspiration-raising’ activities affect student outcomes – see the TASO evaluation guidance for more information on how to do this. Providers should also seek to build an understanding of which specific elements of the programmes are most effective.

Aspiration-raising activities consist of interventions carried out by HEPs to raise students’ aspirations to apply to, and attend, HE. Some of these activities also aim to improve attainment through raising aspirations. They are commonly combined in a programme of activities delivered as a package over several months. Interventions that fall within this category typically include:

  • Open days
  • Campus visits
  • Summer schools
  • Subject tasters
  • Pastoral mentoring

These activities generally aim to develop pupils’ knowledge of HE, aspirations to attend, awareness of the subjects taught and confidence that they will succeed post-entry. They are commonly combined in a package, for example multi-intervention outreach and mentoring (MIOM) programmes.

The advice on this page draws on evidence from studies that investigate the effect of outreach activities on outcomes for school-aged pupils, both primary and secondary, from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds.

TASO has not been able to find any studies that demonstrate a causal link between activities that aim to raise aspirations and student attainment.

The role of aspirations and expectations in HE entry is not straightforward. Some studies have found that young people’s aspirations for HE are high, regardless of their background (Baker et al., 2014). Importantly, young people from disadvantaged backgrounds often have aspiration levels that exceed their actual HE participation and their expectations of progression to HE (Boxer et al., 2011).

Improving students’ expectations – the belief that they will attend HE – may be a more effective avenue for widening participation and there is some evidence that superficially supports this approach. For example, pupils’ expectations about the future correlate with attainment at age 16 (Chowdry, Crawford & Goodman, 2011) and HE entry (Anders and Micklewright, 2015). However, prior attainment is the dominant factor which determines whether and where a person studies, and aspirations appear to largely reflect this prior attainment (Chowdry et al., 2013; Cummings et al., 2012).

Two randomised studies by Destin and Oyserman (2009) found that students who were informed in-detail about needs-based financial aid for HE reported higher expected grades than those who were instead reminded about the high cost of tuition. School-based initiatives designed to make the prospect of attending HE seem more feasible may therefore be more effective in raising attainment than those designed to raise aspirations (Boxer et al., 2011).

Some studies have reported positive effects of using student ambassadors to provide information, guidance and support to pre-entry pupils (Passy and Morris 2010, Ireland et al., 2006), with university students acting as ‘role models’ for school pupils (Sanders and Higham, 2012; Gartland, 2013). However, it is difficult to isolate how student ambassador outreach programmes might improve attainment and more research is required to investigate the mechanisms that contribute to a change in outcomes for pupils (e.g., pupil motivation).

In the UK, initiatives that fall within this category include Aimhigher (Chilosi et al., 2010; Doyle and Griffin, 2012), Upward Bound (Luebsen, 2020) and Uni Connect (Patel and Bowes, 2021). But since the evaluation of these programmes often cover multiple interventions, it is difficult to isolate the effectiveness of specific interventions, despite some evidence of their positive link to attainment.

Attainment, aspirations and expectations are intimately linked and difficult to untangle. Therefore, aspirations and expectations data entry should not be used without considering the broader set of factors which might inhibit entry. Aspirations should be considered as a product of socio-economic status, prior attainment, and other background characteristics, rather than something which can be ‘raised’ in isolation.

Currently, we don’t have enough evidence on the efficacy of these programmes to make statements about which features are important. The mechanisms that sit between aspiration and attainment-raising (student motivation for example) are not rigorously explored in the existing literature, so exactly what might drive change in student outcomes remains unclear.

The existing evidence tends to focus on identifying associations between participation in outreach activities and student outcomes, rather than causal links. This means that, although we can see that pupils who attend these programmes tend to have better outcomes, we cannot say whether this is because the programmes are effective, or because only the most motivated and/or supported pupils attend.

Moreover, most of the existing evidence seeks to examine the effect of a bundle of components; therefore, our understanding of which elements of multi-intervention outreach are most effective is still emerging.

19 relevant pieces of research were found, but only three studies with a causal design.

Causal studies

Anthony, A., 2019. ‘What works’ and ‘what makes sense’ in Widening Participation: an investigation into the potential of university-led outreach to raise attainment in schools. University of Kent (United Kingdom). Linked here.

Chowdry, H., Crawford, C., Dearden, L., Goodman, A., Vignoles, A., 2013. Widening participation in higher education: analysis using linked administrative data. Journal of the Royal Statistical Society: Series A (Statistics in Society) 176, 431–457. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-985X.2012.01043.x

Destin, M. and Oyserman, D., 2009. From assets to school outcomes: How finances shape children’s perceived possibilities and intentions. Psychological Science, 20(4), pp.414-418. Linked here.

Other studies

Anders, J. and Micklewright, J., 2015. Teenagers’ expectations of applying to university: how do they change?. Education sciences, 5(4), pp.281-305. Linked here.

Baker, W., Sammons, P., Siraj-Blatchford, I., Sylva, K., Melhuish, E.C. and Taggart, B., 2014. Aspirations, education and inequality in England: insights from the Effective Provision of Pre-school, Primary and Secondary Education Project. Oxford review of education, 40(5), pp.525-542. Linked here.

Boxer, P., Goldstein, S.E., DeLorenzo, T., Savoy, S. and Mercado, I., 2011. Educational aspiration–expectation discrepancies: Relation to socioeconomic and academic risk-related factors. Journal of adolescence, 34(4), pp.609-617. Linked here.

Burgess, A.P., Horton, M.S. and Moores, E., 2021. Optimising the impact of a multi-intervention outreach programme on progression to higher education: recommendations for future practice and research. Heliyon, 7(7), p.e07518. Linked here.

Chilosi, D., Noble, M., Broadhead, P. and Wilkinson, M., 2010. Measuring the effect of Aimhigher on schooling attainment and higher education applications and entries. Journal of Further and Higher Education, 34(1), pp.1-10. Linked here.

Chowdry, H., Crawford, C., Goodman, A., 2011. The role of attitudes and behaviours in explaining socio- economic differences in attainment at age 16 (No. 10/15), IFS Working Paper. Institute for Fiscal Studies. Linked here.

Cummings, C., Laing, K., Law, J., McLaughlin, J., Papps, I., Todd, L. and Woolner, P., 2012. Can changing aspirations and attitudes impact on educational attainment. York: Joseph Rowntree Foundation. Linked here.

Doyle, M. and Griffin, M., 2012. Raised aspirations and attainment? A review of the impact of Aimhigher (2004–2011) on widening participation in higher education in England. London Review of Education. Linked here.

Gartland, C., 2013. Marketing participation? Student ambassadors’ contribution to widening participation schemes in engineering and medicine at two contrasting universities. Journal of widening participation and lifelong learning, 14(3), pp.102-119. Linked here.

Harding, Sarah and Lindsay Bowes, 2022. Fourth independent review of impact evaluation evidence submitted by Uni Connect partnerships. Linked here.

Hoare, T. and Mann, R., 2011. The impact of the Sutton Trust’s Summer schools on subsequent higher education participation: A report to the Sutton Trust. Bristol: University of Bristol.The impact of the Sutton Trust’s Summer Schools on higher education participation: a report to the Sutton Trust. Linked here.

Ireland, E., Golden, S. and Morris, M., 2006. Evaluation of Integrated Aimhigher: Tracking Surveys of Young People. Research Report RR811. National Foundation for Educational Research. The Mere, Upton Park, Slough, Berkshire, SL1 2DQ, UK. Linked here.

Luebsen, Wilko., 2020: A Report into the Operation of the Upward Bound Programme. London Metropolitan University.

Passy, R, and Morris, M., 2009. Evaluation of Aimhigher: learner attainment and progression. Final Report. Slough: NFER. Linked here.

Patel, R. and Bowes, L., 2021. Third independent review of impact evaluation evidence submitted by Uni Connect partnerships: A summary of the local impact evidence to date for the Office for Students. CFE Research. Linked here.

Sanders, J. and Higham, L., 2012. The role of higher education students in widening access, retention and success. A Literature Synthesis of the Widening Access, Student Retention and Success. National Programmes Archive. York: Higher Education Academy. Linked here.