Recommendations
For the Office for Students
1 . To further support the development of a clear ‘ narrative ’ for future signposting and strategic outreach activity , the OfS could consider :
• Providing further guidance on expected practices or a minimum level of practices expected
• Liaising with partnerships to derive some measurable outputs for signposting and strategic outreach
• Defining expected outcomes , as well as who would be evaluating progress towards these .
2 . Despite the lack of clear patterns in terms of implementation between partnerships , there are indications that some partnership characteristics influence implementation – partnership size , number of schools / colleges / learners served and stage of progress . To support further consistency and continuous improvement , the OfS could consider :
• Encouraging partnerships to assess their signposting and strategic outreach practices using the above characteristics and further test their usefulness
• Providing partnerships with analysis of the monitoring and evaluation data based on such characteristics . Such analysis would enable partnerships to benchmark themselves against other partnerships with similar characteristics , identify potential areas for improvement and seek targeted peer support as and when needed .
For the OfS and partnerships
1 . Partnerships could work with the OfS to define measurable outputs and expectations of progress based on their contexts so that expectations are in line with their characteristics and local needs . Measurable outputs could account for partnerships ’ size , the numbers of schools / colleges / learners engaged and stage of progress . This means that some expectations might differ between different groups of partnerships , but that their progress will be reflected more accurately .
For partnerships
1 . Partnerships could explore further structures and approaches to facilitate more peer to peer support for partnership leads and other roles . Peer-to-peer support needs to be structured around indicative factors influencing implementation , such as partnerships size and other identified in this report . Partnerships should also seek the support of the OfS , e . g . in terms of organisation , administration and / or facilitation of these meetings to reduce their workload .
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