DIAMOND, Abigail, BOWES, Lindsey, MORETON, Rachel, WELFORD, Jo, CRAWFORD, Claire, MCCAIG, Colin, TAZZYMAN, Sarah, BIRKIN, Guy and FRANCES, Nariah (2018). Scottish toolkit for fair access: Interim report. Project Report. CFE Research. (In Press)
Abstract
This interim report provides a detailed methodology for the development of the Scottish
Toolkit for Fair Access. It builds on and develops the method proposed in our response to
the invitation to tender.
The Fair Access Toolkit has two broad aims:
- To provide an accessible summary of the evidence of impact for different interventions to
allow practitioners and funders to select those that are most appropriate given their budget
and target audience.
- To provide guidance on selecting and implementing evaluation methods for practitioners to
support the improved evaluation of widening access initiatives across Scotland.
Our work will focus on the first aim as the necessary initial step to developing the Toolkit.
We propose to initially consider interventions that relate to retention, progression and
success, as topics where the Toolkit can most add value. In particular we will consider
evidence in relation to the following activities:
- Mentoring
- Bursaries / scholarships
- Attainment support
- International opportunities
- Employability guidance
- Internships
We will prioritise evaluations which test the activities with socio-economically
disadvantaged learners and those with one of the nine protected characteristics. If a focus
on these target groups alone does not identify sufficient material, we will widen the search
to include evaluations of interventions that support all students.
We will take a rapid evidence assessment (REA) approach to searching, identifying and
assessing the evidence. Proposed search terms are included in Appendix 1.
To assess and compare impact across different interventions we will calculate effect sizes
and classify studies as having no, low, moderate, high or very high impact. We will aggregate
all of the assessments to provide an overall assessment for each intervention.
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