Application outcomes by Uni Connect areas
71 . Having seen the gaps in application outcomes between the most and least represented areas which the Uni Connect programme was designed to address , this section presents the trends in these same outcomes in the areas where Uni Connect partnerships have targeted their outreach activity .
72 . But we first consider the way in which these areas have been targeted and attempt to quantify the extent of engagement in them .
Uni Connect target areas
73 . Uni Connect partnerships focus their work on areas where higher education participation is not only low in absolute terms , but also lower than might be expected given the GCSE results of young people in that area . These areas were chosen because they have the greatest potential for improvement in participation from the least represented areas . In this report , we refer to these areas as ‘ Uni Connect target areas ’ or simply ‘ Uni Connect areas ’. In practice , partnerships usually deliver outreach activity within schools and colleges , which are targeted because they teach high proportions of learners from Uni Connect areas . 29
74 . It is important to note that we cannot identify individual learners who have engaged with the Uni Connect programme . We can only identify learners who were living in Uni Connect areas while in Key Stage 4 . For this reason , this analysis cannot show the impact of Uni Connect in raising participation among learners who were directly engaged by the programme . It can only show whether the Uni Connect programme appears to be associated with improved participation rates in targeted areas . As the following section shows , it is possible that outreach activity is beneficial for learners who are directly engaged by the programme , but that the scale of this outreach is insufficient to have any meaningful impact on a national level , and therefore cannot be seen in the findings of this analysis .
75 . Another limitation is that if a learner moves area after their final Key Stage 4 year , we have not been able to track this movement in the data . These learners would remain recorded as living in a Uni Connect area in our analysis . Equally , learners recorded as living in a non-Uni Connect area in Key Stage 4 who subsequently moved to a Uni Connect area would remain recorded as living in a non-Uni Connect area .
76 . Table B1 in Annex B provides population counts of learners living in Uni Connect areas and those living in other areas , split by various personal characteristics .
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Learners at the same school or college who are not from a Uni Connect area may also benefit from this engagement ; this is called a spillover effect . Later in this report , we attempt to minimise these spillover effects by removing from the analysis any learners who did not live in Uni Connect areas , but did attend a school or college that Uni Connect partnerships may have worked with .
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