Access and Participation Plan

Centre for the Evaluation of Access, Participation and Student Success (CEAPSS)

The Centre for the Evaluation of Access, Participation and Student Success (CEAPSS) supports the development of impact evaluation and practice across Oxford Brookes University (OBU) with specific focus on supporting the aims and commitments set out in our institutional Access and Participation Plan. CEAPSS is the home of the Impact Evaluation and Insight Team, who work to support colleagues involved in delivering the Access and Participation Plan with evaluation practice, and to understand the impact of activities and practice on students across all stages of their journey to and through higher education.

What is Oxford Brookes’ Access and Participation Plan?

The Office for Students (OfS), the independent regulator for higher education in the England, requires that each university registered with it has an Access and Participation Plan as part of its strategy. Access and Participation Plans set out the different ways that a university is going to improve the equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged and underrepresented backgrounds. The plans set out how Universities will make sure that students from disadvantaged backgrounds have equal opportunity to get into University and succeed whilst they are there, and after they have left University.

Our founder, John Henry Brookes, believed that everyone should have access to education: that’s why equality of opportunity is embedded throughout our institutional mission and strategy, and within our Oxford Brookes’ Access and Participation Plan (PDF). The plan sets out where we have the most progress to make in providing equality of opportunity for students in our region, and the actions we will take to achieve this. It sits within our wider guiding principles, particularly relating to inclusivity which underpins what we do and how we do it.

Contact us

Centre for the Evaluation of Access, Participation and Student Success

wp.evaluationteam@brookes.ac.uk

CEAPSS strategic aims

Access

Access refers to the opportunities for students from underrepresented or disadvantaged backgrounds to enter higher education. Includes outreach and recruitment efforts aimed at increasing the number and diversity of applicants from groups of students currently underrepresented in Higher Education.

Success

Success refers to the experience and academic outcomes of students from all backgrounds once they are enrolled in higher education, particularly in terms of retention, attainment, and completion of studies. Success in the APP context specifically means ensuring that students from all backgrounds, especially underrepresented groups, are supported to succeed academically and personally during their time at university.

Progression

Progression refers to the opportunities and outcomes for students after graduation, particularly in terms of employment and further study. Progression initiatives focus on ensuring equitable access to graduate-level employment, postgraduate study, or other positive destinations, and reducing disparities in outcomes between different student demographics.

Invest in evaluation resources, upskilling and professional development for colleagues across Oxford Brookes University to enhance our in-house capacity to evaluate.
Fulfill to a high standard the evaluation requirements of Oxford Brookes' strategic and operational initiatives and objectives, prioritising evaluation of interventions included within the 2025-2029 APP.
Contribute to in-house and sector-level research in to 'what works' in relation to Access, Success and Progression initiatives.
Situate Oxford Brookes University as a sector-leading institution for robost, embedded, collaborative and proportionate evaluation practice at whole institution.

What does the Impact Evaluation and Insight Team do?

CEAPSS is a central resource for in-house evaluation expertise relating to Access, Success, and Progression-related activity and a resource and source of support for staff working on delivering the aims and objectives of our Access and Participation Plan. The Insight and Evaluation Team work to synthesise and share updates and information, resources, tools and good practice from the sector, as well as insights from Oxford Brookes’ own programmes, projects and evaluations.

The Impact Evaluation and Insight Team are committed to working towards institutionally-embedded evaluation approaches and practice which both informs our own context and provision and contributes to the national evidence base and community of practice.

We do this by:

Working closely and collaboratively with other teams and departments to evaluate specific Access and Participation Plan activities and interventions to ensure they are working to meet the intended objectives.

Actioning the commitments we make in our plan is an institution-wide enterprise, spanning all aspects of OBU’s operations. For this reason we engage with colleagues across the institution, ensuring a joined-up approach to delivering our commitments and using robust in-house and sector data to target support effectively. In this way we aim to support the OfS’ aspiration for HE providers to ‘develop inclusive internal communities of practice to support colleagues […] on their evaluation journeys’, providing support and advice relating to process, formative and summative evaluation for activities, programmes and interventions.

Working to continuously create resources and practical tools for staff to use in their own evaluations.

CEAPSS hosts this Google Site (accessible to OBU staff only) which acts as a hub of information, resources, practical tools and guidance on evaluation.

Undertaking insight work to explore the impact of activities, processes and practices taking place across the university.

OBU offers a vast array of support and activity to support students to access, succeed in, and progress from higher education: making sure the support we offer is effective, and that we understand how and why it works, is important to ensure we can best support good outcomes for every student.

Sharing insights and good practice with colleagues, as well as contributing to the sector knowledge and evidence base.

Oxford Brookes University (OBU) aspires to position ourselves as a sector-leading institution for evaluation practice and is committed to working towards institutionally-embedded evaluation approaches and practice which both informs our own context and provision and contributes to the national evidence base and community of practice. Our affiliation with sector networks such as the NERUPI Network, the Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE), The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in HE (TASO) and the Higher Education Access Tracker (HEAT).

CEAPSS evaluation principles

Evaluation of Access and Participation Plan activities within Oxford Brookes will:

be based on robust Theory of Change models, developed at an appropriate scale(s)
be embedded in the design of Access and Participation plan activities to enable the most appropriate and effective evaluation designs to be implemented, and to enable evaluation to be formative
be designed to include both qualitative and quantitative evaluation methods to answer how and why, as well as how much questions
focus on reaching conclusions and recommendations with practical relevance to inform the design and development of Access and Participation Plan activity
seek to provide robust evidence and learning for the sector as well as to inform the ongoing development of interventions within Oxford Brookes
involve students where possible in evaluation design and implementation to make it participatory so that it contributes to mitigating the belonging and shaping risk
take a collaborative approach to evaluation, where feasible, engaging with stakeholders to help ensure findings are relevant and have most potential for implementation
be undertaken ethically and informed by in-house and sector research ethics guidance

Meet the team

Dr Emily Scott

Head of Impact Evaluation and Insight

Dr Tamara McNeill

Research Fellow for Access, Participation and Success

Joanne Miles

Monitoring and Tracking Coordinator

Resources for staff

CEAPSS hosts a newly-developed virtual Impact Evaluation and Insight Hub. The Hub is accessible to Oxford Brookes staff only and is a space for the Impact Evaluation and Insight Team to share

outcomes and impact information relating to our Access and Participation Plan
in-house and sector news and insights relevant to the student groups and demographics covered within our Access and Participation Plan
insights relevant to the Access and Participation Plan and associated activities and interventions.
data relating to student access and outcomes.

CEAPSS also hosts an Access and Participation Impact and Insight Mailing List as a means of sharing sector insights, articles, news and data relevant to the work being undertaken as part of our Access and Participation Plan and the activities and interventions being facilitated by colleagues across the university to support student Access, Success and Progression. The mailing list is a direct means for us to share insights and news relating to the specific groups and demographics we are seeking to support through our plan.

If you are interested in receiving email news shots and insights relevant to the Access and Participation Plan you can sign up and select your specific subjects and interests via this short survey. Selecting the specific subjects and areas you are interested in allows us to tailor the content you receive to your specific areas of interest.

Case studies

Students as partners: Lessons from a participatory evaluation

Dr Wendy Fowle (Associate Professor and Dean for Student Outcomes) and Dr Tamara McNeill (Research Fellow, Access, Participation and Success) discuss the approach they took to evaluate Oxford Brookes’ Thrive Festival 2025 as part of delivering on the commitments laid out in Oxford Brookes’ Action and Participation Plan. Wendy and Tamara explain how they used a participatory approach by working with student consultants as evaluation co-designers, as well as discussing what they did, what they learned, and what they plan to do differently next time.

More information

Quality evaluation practice is hugely important to Oxford Brookes, as well as to our regulator the Office for Students whose vision is that evidence and evaluation are used by higher education providers to drive improvements in equality of opportunity. You don’t have to be an evaluation expert to be able to deploy a good evaluation approach: there are plenty of sector resources, tools and guidance available online to support good evaluation practice.

The Office for Students (OfS) regulates all providers of Higher Education across England and their website contains information about how universities and HE providers are expected to create and publish Access and Participation Plans, setting out how they will improve equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access, succeed in, and progress from higher education.
NERUPI Network: the NERUPI Framework is a widening participation framework developed to help design, evaluate, and report on programs aimed at reducing inequalities in higher education access and progression. It uses a praxis-based approach, combining theory and practice to capture the impact of interventions across different stages of the student lifecycle. The framework provides a conceptual structure for creating interventions with clear, measurable aims and objectives.
Forum for Access and Continuing Education (FACE) are a membership organisation for HE and FE practitioners, researchers, student unions and third sector operators, that brings professionals together. OBU are members of FACE and benefit from the insights and collaboration opportunities they offer.
The Centre for Transforming Access and Student Outcomes in HE (TASO) are an independent hub for the higher education sector, providing evidence and resources to help reduce equality gaps. They have produced a number of high-quality resources for evaluators, including validated scales, evidence toolkits, a theory of change builder tool, and a Higher Education Evaluation Library (HEEL) which are well worth exploring.