Posted 24 July 2026

Amid the development of Regional Access Partnerships, the bedding in of Access and Participation Plans (APPs) and an uncertain policy direction ahead, the world of access and participation is in a period of major transition. However, evaluation as a strategic focus for enabling and demonstrating meaningful impact has quietly been maturing in the background.  

Nine years into Uni Connect/NCOP (National Collaborative Outreach Programme), evaluative practice has run through the veins of the project since the start, grounding outreach strategy in theory, evidence and impact-focused accountability. This has evolved and improved over time, and continues to do so, enabling evaluation and impact to be prioritised and embedded while providing an example for the rest of the sector to follow. 

At Go Higher West Yorkshire (GHWY), core evaluative objectives in 2025/26 represent a continuation of previous priorities: to support internal learning and evidence-based practice and to provide valuable evidence resources to its members and the sector. Reflecting on the year gone by, there is much to be proud of. 

Internal impact 

A year after its launch, this year has seen the GHWY Outcomes Framework undergo an annual review and refresh. It continues to be embedded as the evidence-based structure underpinning strategic outreach and attainment-raising interventions, as well as informing how we measure impact. This framework feeds into our understanding of impact across all evaluation methods and in 2025/26 this is helping us to begin to think about our evidence through a strategic lens, graduating from a primarily intervention-level understanding of impact to a more sophisticated understanding of the mechanisms at play which generate impact for learners. 

Evaluation methods have continued to evolve throughout 2025/26, including: 

• The continuation of qualitative longitudinal case studies, returning to interview many learners involved with this evaluation project for a second year. 
• The introduction of the GHWY Analysis Workbook, enabling the Uni Connect team to produce evaluative insights from learner-generated creative content. 
• The first iteration of matched cohort GCSE results analysis for learners completing the Think and Go Higher programme in 2023/24. 

External impact 

GHWY’s voice, influence and evaluative support has been buoyant this academic year, with many examples of sector and member engagement. The publication of an impact report for HE Careers Coaching (delivered by GHWY Uni Connect in 2023/24) received engagement from the sector and the Office for Students (OfS). We also submitted three pieces of evidence to the OfS’s 2025/26 attainment raising call for evidence. Further evidence is due to be published by GHWY over the summer. 

GHWY’s evaluation support for members has gained traction in 2025/26, providing training, resources and engagement opportunities including: 

• The delivery of an evaluation training package to colleagues across GHWY member institutions with responsibility for evaluating APPs. 
• Training and pilot testing of the GHWY Analysis Toolkit for external colleagues, enabling accessible analysis of qualitative and quantitative evaluation data. 
• The inaugural GHWY Evaluation Exchange, attended by colleagues across multiple GHWY member institutions to share evidence and learning locally. 

As 2025/26 draws to a close we pause not only to reflect on the year’s achievements but also on what comes next. As the OfS prepares to finalise the successor programme to Uni Connect from 2027/28, there is plentiful opportunity to build on the evolving successes moulded from nine years of evaluating Uni Connect. Across 29 partnerships a wealth of evidence now exists, and Uni Connect evaluators are growing ever more skilled, confident, and innovative in their approaches to developing evidence and implementing evidence-based approaches. Learning from and scaling the strongest examples of evaluation within strategy and practice may be key to the success of future policy initiatives such as regional access partnerships. 

 

Natalie Aldridge, GHWY Data, Evaluation and Impact Manager