Blog8 April 2025
We would like to hear from you!
Following the news that we are developing a new library of evaluations in higher education, we are running two online consultation webinars to gather your thoughts and questions.
The highly anticipated Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL) is being designed as we speak. As TASO’s CEO, Dr Omar Khan, set out in a blog post at the end of last year, the HEEL is intended to bring together evaluations across the sector that are now being published in many disparate places, to create a culture of sharing and learning and enable knowledge exchange.
TASO has partnered up with the team at the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) to develop the HEEL and progress is underway. We will take a collaborative approach to developing the HEEL, which includes working in partnership with the sector. We want the HEEL to be easy for a range of roles and providers in higher education to use. It is important that the HEEL helps the sector effectively share knowledge and develop its evaluation practices.
So what is the HEEL exactly?
The HEEL will be an online, searchable and filterable library featuring intervention evaluations in the higher education sector related to access, participation and/or success. Providers will be able to submit their evaluations directly for publication to the HEEL. Whilst the HEEL will be hosted by HEAT, it will be available to both HEAT and non-HEAT members.
Based on the HEEL, TASO will produce regular digests summarising key insights from evidence included in the HEEL, including trends and patterns in evaluation practice. The HEEL will also inform the summaries and appraisals of bodies of evidence available in our evidence toolkits.
John Blake, Director for Fair Access and Participation at the Office for Students, said:
“The HEEL is a crucial building block of the OfS’s refreshed approach to equality of opportunity — a hub where all practitioners and researchers involved in access and participation work can review evaluation plans and publish their outcomes. I am hugely excited about the role it will play in sharing knowledge and helping us all to enhance our work.“
How can you contribute?
As planning and the development of the HEEL progresses, we are now opening up consultations to the sector. Among our series of planned consultation events about the HEEL, we will be running a consultation session at our annual conference on 29 April. There will also be two opportunities to hear about the HEEL, provide feedback, and to ask questions in public online webinars. Please note that all the consultation sessions, both online and in person, cover the same content.
The public webinars will be held on:
- Wednesday 7 May, 13:00–1430
- Thursday 22 May, 10.30–12:00
The webinars will cover:
- how the HEEL came about
- partnership working
- objectives of the HEEL
- benefits to the sector
- development process
- TASO digests
- next steps
The HEEL will be an evolving project, with more opportunities to feed back and consult. We hope that you can join in this initial stage of developing the HEEL.