Project | Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL)

Find out about the HEEL

Access HEEL submission guidance

Explore frequently asked questions

About the HEEL

The HEEL will be a repository of evaluations of interventions designed to address equality gaps in higher education in England. 

By enabling providers to share their evaluation plans and findings, the HEEL will support knowledge exchange, foster collaboration, and support the dissemination of evaluation evidence on what works to reduce inequalities in higher education. It will also help identify trends in evaluation practice across the sector.

The HEEL comprises:

• a submission portal, hosted by the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) – a form allowing users to submit their evaluations
• the HEEL database – a searchable library of the submitted evaluations – publication planned for summer 2026. 

There are three phases to the form and resource launch:

Phase 1

The submission portal element is now live to HEAT members only (from December 2025), via the HEAT system. Phase 1 allows HEAT members to prepare and save submissions in the system, but cannot yet submit or publish.

Phase 2

The submission portal element will open up access to the submission portal to non-HEAT members, and will also allow users to submit their evaluations. The sector will be encouraged to submit evaluations ready for the launch of the main database.

Phase 3

The HEEL resource – the searchable database – will go live, and will include all submitted evaluations.

The timing of phase 2 and 3 are planned for 2026, and we will update here and on our social channels once we have firm dates for those phases.

Please also sign up to our newsletter for updates.

Digests and analysis

Once the HEEL is established, TASO will produce regular HEEL digests – short summaries that highlight key trends, patterns, and descriptive data from the evaluations submitted. These digests will be available through both the HEEL and TASO websites.

We are planning to use the evidence submitted to the HEEL to inform our work, including updates of our evidence toolkits. These toolkits summarise and appraise the findings from existing evidence on approaches to widening participation and student success for disadvantaged and underrepresented groups.

HEEL webinar

Watch our consultation webinar where we provided an overview of the development of the HEEL.

HEEL submission guidance

The HEEL database is set to launch in summer 2026. HEAT members can currently upload and save their evaluations on the HEAT system. Non-HEAT members based in England will be able to request an account for the HEAT system and to upload evaluations later in 2026. All users will be able to submit their evaluations later in 2026.  

• Higher education providers (both HEAT and non-HEAT members) will have one account with multiple users.
• Existing HEAT members will be able to assign permissions to others from their organisation.
• All users linked to a non-HEAT member account will automatically have full rights and permissions to publish.

This guidance will help you prepare your submissions. It outlines how to submit your evaluations and what you need to get ready now. 

Before you start

Required information

You will need the following about your intervention:

• Permission to publish from your institution. 
• Title of your intervention.
  • Your intervention title should describe what it does, so it is easy to identify and find. This title will also be publicly available and searchable.
• Key information about your institution:
  • Name, job title and email of a key contact or senior member of staff for maintaining future contact. This can be a departmental email address.
• Organisational details:
  • Where the intervention is being implemented
  • Who funded the intervention
  • Who is conducting the evaluation
• Intervention details:
  • Relevant education stage (for example, pre-entry or post-entry)
  • What activities are involved (using categories from the TASO Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool)
  • A summary of the intervention (approximately 250 words)
  • Target group (or if it is universally available)
  • Equality of Opportunity Risk Register risk category for the target group
  • Estimated number of participants
  • If it is linked to an access and participation plan (APP), and if so, the start and end year of the APP
• Evaluation details:
  • Stage of evaluation (planning, interim, complete or stopped)
  • Methodologies 
  • Outcome measures (using categories from the TASO Mapping Outcomes and Activities Tool)
  • Surveys and use of the Access and Success Questionnaire
  • Details of ethical approval if applicable. (You can still submit if you did not seek or receive ethical approval)
  • Evaluation start and end date (or expected end date)
• Details of your findings (if known):
  • A summary of evaluation findings, and any other important contextual information (approximately 250 words)
  • Ensure that findings only contain anonymised data. Do not publish any personal data.
• Links and documents related to your evaluation, including:
  • Theory of change in PDF format
  • Research protocol in PDF format
  • Final or interim reports in PDF format. Ensure that reports only include anonymised data. Do not publish any personal data.

The submission form should take between 15 and 30 minutes to complete.

Optional information

• Funding details of your evaluation
• Names of evaluation authors
• Intervention cost details
• Additional findings, implementation and process evaluation findings, or economic evaluation findings (approximately 250 words)
• Research materials such as surveys or interview schedules in PDF format.
• Links to academic journals or relevant websites

Templates and resources

We encourage the use of TASO guidance and templates, for example: validated scales, ethics, research protocols, reports and theory of change.

Types of evaluation 

The HEEL aims to include a broad range of evaluation types, including quantitative and qualitative methods, and evaluations exploring correlations between interventions and outcomes, as well as those demonstrating causal impact or causal attribution. 

You may submit an evaluation at any stage of the process. If you submit just an evaluation plan initially, please add interim findings or a full report once available.

Methodologies

• Randomised controlled trials (RCTs): Evaluations that compare the outcomes of participants randomly assigned to an intervention treatment and control group. Randomisation may take place within clusters (that is schools, departments or courses) or between clusters (for example, courses are randomly assigned to the intervention). See TASO’s guidance on RCTs.
• Quasi-experimental designs (QEDs): Evaluations that compare the outcomes of an intervention treatment group to a non-randomly assigned comparison group. Quasi-experimental methods include regression discontinuity designs, instrumental variables, treatment-selection regression models, difference-in-differences, fixed effects regressions, interrupted time series models, statistical matching methods, and the synthetic control method. SeeTASO’s guidance on QEDs.
• Theory-based evaluations (TBE): Evaluations that assess change by testing the causal pathways in a theory of change, examining whether the expected causal links between inputs, activities, outputs and outcomes occur in practice. They can investigate underlying assumptions, identify mechanisms driving change, and examine contextual factors to provide a comprehensive understanding of impact. Many methods fall under this category, such as realist evaluation, contribution analysis, qualitative comparative analysis and process tracing. See TASO’s guidance on TBE, or ‘small n’ methods.
• Qualitative evaluations: Evaluations that use qualitative methods to determine the effect of an intervention and/or explore how and why an intervention made changes. These may be simpler methods than a theory-based evaluation and can provide empirical evidence but they do not provide causal claims. Evaluation methods include interviews, focus groups, case studies, qualitative surveys, observations, and creative methods.
• Pre-post design: Evaluations using surveys to determine whether there is a significant difference between the pre-intervention scores and post-intervention scores. For more information, see TASO’s guidance on pre- and post-test design methodologies.
• Correlational regression analysis: Evaluations that involve non-causal impact analysis examining correlations between interventions and outcomes. For example, measuring the correlation between lecture attendance and module attainment.
• Implementation and process evaluations (IPE): Evaluations that assess how an intervention or programme is put into practice, whether it operates as expected, how it operates to achieve its intended outcomes, and the factors that influence these processes. For more information, see TASO’s guidance on IPE.
• Economic evaluations: Evaluations that assess the costs and benefits of an intervention and whether resources are being used optimally to achieve desired outcomes and impacts. Examples of different approaches include cost-effectiveness analysis, cost-benefit analysis, cost-utility analysis, and other types of value-for-money assessment. See TASO’s guidance on economic evaluation.
• Pilot evaluations: Evaluations that are a small-scale, preliminary assessment of an intervention designed to test its feasibility, implementation processes, and methods for measuring impacts (such as data collection procedures) before scaling up to a full impact evaluation. It helps identify strengths, weaknesses, and necessary adjustments to improve the intervention and/or evaluation and research design. 

Inclusion criteria: types of interventions

Interventions can target any part of the student lifecycle, including access, success and progression. 

An intervention can be part of a wider strategy or plan, such as an access and participation plan , a whole-provider approach or a singular activity designed to address an inequality gap in student access, success and progression.

Interventions may also have outcomes that range from short- to longer-term. Acceptable outcome measures for evaluations include the following:

• Actual behaviours or outcomes (for example, applying to higher education or remaining on a course) and
• Non-behavioural outcomes (for example, survey responses). For non-behavioural measures, the use of validated scales is preferred but not essential. Validated scales are measurement tools, like questionnaires, that have been systematically tested to ensure they accurately and reliably measure what they intend to measure.

Although literature reviews will not be accepted, explorative studies examining the problems an intervention intends to address can form part of the background information.

The submission portal includes questions about intervention activity types and the outcomes. The options align with TASO’s Mapping Activities and Outcomes Tool (MOAT). 

Academic publications

We accept evaluations that have been published or submitted to academic journals. Add the DOI link to the relevant publication, or pre-publication in the ‘Upload’ tab on the submission form. 

Please note:

• If your published paper is open access, you may attach a copy to your submission. 
• If your published paper is not open access, you may be able to upload a pre-typeset copy. 
• If following a mixed-methods approach, please select all methods that are relevant to your evaluation. 
• If you are unsure then please check with your institution or the journal before attaching any copy of the paper to the HEEL.

Ethics and data sharing

You do not need ethical approval for submission to the HEEL, but you must state whether you sought approval or not. 

Do not share any personal data from your evaluation, unless you have permission to do so such as sharing the names of evaluators if they wish to be named.

Please ensure that any data presented is anonymised and does not contain personal data. For more information on data sharing, anonymisation and mitigating risks, please see TASO’s guidance on ethics for research and evaluation projects.

Non-HEAT members (Non-HEAT members will be able to access later in 2026)

Non-HEAT members will be able to create an account and assign up to three staff members per organisational account.Please follow any organisational procedures for publishing and ensure you have appropriate approval.

HEAT members

For HEAT member organisations, permissions to view, edit and publish to the HEEL can be granted separately for individual users. This is managed by HEAT Coordinators using the MyHEAT area.

 

 

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