Students who participate in summer schools more likely to attend university

The analysis finds that attending summer schools is associated with higher GSCE grades – revealing a 2.9 point increase in Attainment 8 scores – and improvements in progression to higher education.

The report also finds that university or college campus visits are linked to higher grades, particularly for disadvantaged students with low previous academic performance.

Dr Omar Khan, Director of TASO said:

“Universities across the UK spend countless hours and resources each year running summer schools for prospective students. TASO’s new analysis is a positive sign that such efforts are not made in vain. However, we now need to build on this evidence to determine whether such activities are having the intended impact to close equality gaps for disadvantaged and underrepresented students in higher education.”

Sharon Smith, Director HEAT said:

“It is great to be able to publish results which are a culmination of all the hard work that providers undertake to capture and process data around outreach delivery. These results would not be possible without the commitment and collaboration of HEAT members, and data custodians such as the Department for Education and HESA.  This analysis shows the importance of contextualising the HE progression outcomes of tracked outreach participants with their prior attainment in Key Stage exams from the NPD. We would also like to see further research to help triangulate these findings and in parallel, to continue our own research to deepen our understanding on the effect of different types of outreach on a range of outreach participant groups.”

Students’ participation more broadly in intensive outreach – attending one or more intensive activities – is associated with an increase in Attainment 8 scores of 3.4 points and a 6-13 percentage point rise in the likelihood of progressing to higher education.

The attainment analysis focused on approximately 117,500 individuals and the higher education progression analysis focused on approximately 165,500 individuals from HEAT’s extensive membership dataset on outreach participation.

The report cannot provide causal evidence on the efficacy of activities. This is due to limitations within the dataset, including an inability to capture individual motivation or parental support, which are strongly correlated with attainment and higher education progression.

TASO is conducting a randomised controlled trial (RCT) of summer schools to generate causal evidence and uncover the effect of the activity versus the effect of certain individuals being more likely to attend.

• Download the summary report: An investigation into the relationship between outreach participation and KS4 attainment/ HE progression
• Download HEAT technical appendix 1
• Download TASO technical appendix 2 

Contact – TASO

Zoe Arthur | Communications Manager | zoe.arthur@kcl.ac.uk | 07784388030

• The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in Higher Education (TASO) is a What Works Centre for the higher education sector, part of the Government’s What Works Movement. TASO’s focuses on eliminating equality gaps in higher education.
• Established in Spring 2019, TASO was set up by a consortium of King’s College London, Nottingham Trent University, and the Behavioural Insights Team, and is funded by the Office for Students. TASO aims to be fully independent and self-funding by 2022.
• The Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT) Service is a national non-profit-making collaboration between higher education (HE) outreach providers. HEAT provides a monitoring and evaluation service, at the heart of which is an extensive system of outreach participant data collection and tracking.
• HEAT has collected an impressive dataset from across its membership, comprising outreach participant details and information about their involvement in outreach activities.
• The HEAT dataset is annually linked to government data on education outcomes, including attainment and information on whether and where participants enter HE. This data linking makes the HEAT database a potentially powerful resource to explore questions about the relative efficacy of different outreach approaches.