TASO is seeking higher education providers to take part in a project to evaluate the impact of summer schools on widening participation in higher education.

Providers can apply for a grant of up to £14,000 to enable them to engage a research assistant to lead on the project as well as to cover any expenses incurred for the purposes of the evaluation.

The project will include:

  • Project workshops to develop common evaluation and measurement frameworks.
  • The opportunity to develop experience in using Randomised Controlled Trials to evaluate outreach activities.
  • Implementation of the impact evaluation. This will include altering the application and selection process for summer school participants to enable the evaluation to occur.
  • Working with the TASO team on the implementation and process evaluation to understand how the key elements of the summer school operate in practice and how this differs across target groups and contexts.
  • The opportunity to work closely with the independent evaluator and TASO team and develop your institution’s overall knowledge of evaluation techniques.

For more information on how to get involved please email Dr Helen Lawson, Research Programmes Manager at helen.lawson@taso.org.uk.

This is an extension of a project which evaluated summer schools that were delivered online over the summer of 2021 due to the impact of Covid-19. TASO is seeking to evaluate summer schools that will be back to face-to-face delivery this academic year. For more information on the evaluation which took place in 2021, see our summer school project page here.