The National Collaborative Outreach Programme (NCOP) was launched in January 2017 with the aim of increasing progression to higher education (HE) among certain under-represented groups. To achieve this, 29 partnerships were funded by HEFCE and by the Office for Students (OfS) from April 2018 to deliver a ‘sustained, progressive and intensive programme of support’ to pupils in Years 9 to 13 living in areas with low levels of HE participation and where participation was lower than expected given GCSE attainment. Professor Colin McCaig along with colleagues from the SIoE (Dr Manny Madriaga) and CFE Research were awarded the evaluation commission. Our Phase One final report demonstrates the additional value that collaborative outreach has provided, particularly in previous ‘cold spots’ (areas where few schools had any recent contact with HE institutions) and that there has been a new emphasis on working with parents of NCOP young people.

NCOP End of phase one evaluation report (PDF, 1.3MB) (PDF, 1.3MB)

NCOP End of phase one evaluation report executive summary (PDF, 256.3KB) (PDF, 256.3KB)