RAPPORT
WWW.RECORDINGACHIEVEMENT.AC.UK
Issue 2 (2015)
as well as an ‘observational study’. More generally,
since these options would involve outreach
practitioners and teaching professionals working
together, they accord with OFFA and HEFCE’s
[2014b, p.11] desire to see closer and ‘more
effective collaboration between higher education
providers [and] schools and colleges’.
Further reflections
The focus of this discussion has so far been on the
indirect impact of outreach on the classmates of
intervention participants. Yet the literature also
suggests that others are likely to be affected. In
this respect, McNamara et al. (1996, p.8) refer to
the impact that educational schemes can have on
the wider community, whilst in a study of the
benefits of HE in the UK, Woodhall (2004, p.39)
talks about ‘spill-over benefits’ since they spill over
to other members of society. Similarly, during the
discussions with the practitioners mention was
made of others being influenced. Most notably
these comprised teachers, especially those who
accompanied pupils on their outreach visits. Here
reference was made to seeing ‘teachers sitting
with groups of students trying to solve the
problems together or competing against the
students’ which, it was added, ‘the students love!’
In such circumstances, it was observed that the
teachers themselves become ‘involved in the
learning process, demonstrating lifelong learning
and an openness to new ideas’. The potential in
such cases is that this learning and these new
ideas will be carried back into the classroom.
Surveying teachers a few weeks after they have
returned to school would be one mechanism for
capturing and recording evidence of such an effect.
A further group of indirect beneficiaries identified
in the course of the discussions were parents.
They would become aware of these interventions
as a consequence of completing consent forms
permitting their offspring to participate whilst also
receiving information about the nature and
purpose of these events, especially if they were
taking place outside school hours and required
travel arrangements to be made. However, the
discussions with the teaching professionals
revealed that the parents of non-participants might
also constitute indirect beneficiaries. Indeed,
examples were offered of practices that are or
could be introduced to harness this effect. These
comprised:
Publishing the outreach event reports written
by teachers who had also attended outreach
events in a school newsletter sent to parents
and placed in prominent [public] locations
around the school;
Encouraging outreach participants to give
presentations to parents and carers at careers
evenings;
Using a power-point presentation at the same
events to show, through images and
quotations, ‘what the students had produced
and learnt from these events’;
Using the introductory talk at such events to
outline the interventions pupils had attended
and to discuss the benefits and impact of this
engagement.
Moreover, it was added that these initiatives might
prove particularly helpful in providing information
and advice to those parents who had not
experienced university themselves and yet were
likely to have a significant influence on the
educational decisions made by their children.
Whilst capturing the impact of articles appearing in
a printed newsletter is challenging, it is possible to
envisage surveying parents and guardians at the
end of a careers evening to determine how
informative they found the event, especially in
terms of the school’s outreach activities.
Concluding comments
In keeping with studies that have considered the
concept in other spheres, widening access
interventions do seem capable of generating
indirect beneficiaries amongst the peers and
classmates of outreach participants. Indeed, from
discussions for this study, it is evident that some
teaching professionals are clearly aware of the
potential of widening access programmes in this
respect. Moreover, examples were offered of how
to manage and maximise the indirect impact, along
with methods of capturing the evidence for it. In
addition, during the course of the same
discussions two further groups of indirect
beneficiaries were identified: teachers, especially
those accompanying pupils on outreach events,
and parents, including those whose offspring are
not outreach participants. In both cases, the
mechanisms for transmission were acknowledged
and, certainly in the latter case, examples could be
offered of ways to harness and maximise this
impact.
Whilst the challenge of quantifying the numbers
benefiting in this way should not be
underestimated, nor the methods of capturing and
recording the nature of such benefits, it can be
argued that it is only through acknowledging and
evaluating the indirect that the full impact of
outreach interventions can be appreciated. In their
recent guidance to the sector, OFFA and HEFCE
(OFFA/HEFCE 2014a; OFFA 2015c) have urged
widening access practitioners to look beyond
gathering evidence concerned with intervention
delivery and attitudinal change amongst
participants. The sector is also asked to address
the two higher levels of evaluation identified in
Kirkpatrick’s typology (Dent et al., 2013). The
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