Monitoring the effectiveness of Aimhigher targeting procedures

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Monitoring the effectiveness of Aimhigher
targeting procedures

• Richard Dodgson
• Regional Manager Impact and Strategy
• Aimhigher North East

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Stage 3 data requirements

• Concerned with what data needs to be collected
  from participants in main/most intensive
  activities
• As a minimum must collect the following
• Occupation of the main wage earner in the
  learners household
• Educational background of parents/carers
• Ethnicity, age and sex of learner, and the nature
  of any disability they may
• Home postcode of the learner, postcode of the
  school, college or training provider
• Must collect data on parental occupation

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Stage 3 success criteria

• Judge effectiveness of targeting against 2
  success criteria
• Two-thirds from NS-SEC 4-7
• Two-thirds from areas with highest level of
  deprivation
• For most intensive activities, must know the
  proportion of participants from NS-SEC 4-7 and
  the 13,000 most deprived LSOA, as defined by IMD

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Stage 3 other requirements

• Continuous improvement
• Data collection and analysis that shows target
  groups are being successfully involved
• Avoid multiple requests for information
• Respect data protection when sharing information
• Reflect on targeting process in monitoring returns

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The monitoring process
LOCAL COLLECTION, REGIONAL COLLATION AND ANALYSIS
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Planning and preparation

• Regional team will lead on
• Setting up the process
• Provide core questions and data collection
  template to support partners in gathering data
  from participants and parents/carers
• Brief sub-regional coordinators
• Sub-regional coordinators will
• Brief local providers
• Give guidance on meeting minimum data
  requirements and identifying main/intensive
  activities
• Provide a list of these main activities to the
  regional team

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Data collection

• Ongoing collection of data from participants and
  parents/carers is central to the overall success
  of the process
• Providers must ensure that they have systems in
  place for gathering data from learners that
  participate in most intensive activities
• As a minimum must collect the following data
• Occupation of the main wage earner in the
  learners household
• Educational background of parents/carers
• Ethnicity, age and sex of learner, and the nature
  of any disability they may
• Home postcode of the learner, postcode of the
  school, college or training provider

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Data collection

• Individual providers decide upon most effective
  means of data collection
• Information on occupation gathered directly from
  parent/carer
• As it is gathered, data is stored on the activity
  monitoring template, provided by the regional
  team
• Template is completed for each of the most
  intensive activities and returned to the
  sub-regional coordinator
• Sub-regional coordinator combines data into a
  single spreadsheet and returns this to the
  regional team in Jan, Apr and Aug

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Fig.1 Blank activity monitoring template
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Fig 2 Completed activity monitoring template
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Data analysis

• On receipt of data from sub-regional coordinators
  regional team will undertake
• Data cleaning
• Coding and translation of occupation data into
  NS-SEC
• Calculate sub-regional and regional performance
  against success criteria
• Generate individual activity reports,
  highlighting activity level performance and basic
  demographic breakdowns
• Feedback to sub-regional coordinators, who
  disseminate to providers

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Fig 3 Sample activity report
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Timetable

• Roll out of protocol during October
• Jan 2008 first data analysis period
• Apr 2008 second data analysis period
• Aug 2008 third data analysis period
• Aug 2008 review of process

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Summary

• HEFCE requires that we monitor procedures for
  targeting disadvantage learners
• Local collection, regional collation and analysis
• Success depends upon
• Providers collecting information from learners
  that participate in most intensive activities on
  a regular basis
• Passing information on, via sub-regional
  coordinators, to regional team for analysis
• Must show continuous improvement

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Further information

• Richard Dodgson
• r.dodgson_at_unis4ne.ac.uk
• 0191 516 4405