HeppSY Uni Connect Outreach: Longitudinal Evaluation

The Higher Education Progression Partnership South Yorkshire (HeppSY) is part of the Uni Connect Programme (UCP), funded by the Office for Students. The main focus of Uni Connect is to provide targeted higher education (HE) outreach to young people in Years 9 to 13 living in particular geographic areas. From August 2021 this broadened out to include the targeting of adult learners (learners aged 19 and above). HeppSY is working in partnership with Sheffield Hallam University, The University of Sheffield and South Yorkshire schools and colleges. To provide evidence for the impact of HeppSY outreach on outcomes relevant to HE access, a series of analyses were conducted matching together multiple waves of an annual student survey, HeppSY activity data, and student HE access data drawn from the Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA). The results indicated that students who participated in more hours of outreach displayed greater increases in self-reported HE knowledge across survey waves, while evidence for an association between outreach engagement and increases in intention of applying to HE was mixed. Importantly, greater engagement in HeppSY outreach was associated with increased odds of accessing HE, and this relationship remained significant after controlling for baseline intentions of applying to HE.