York

Objectives

To focus on links between higher education and secondary schools. The project's target group was young people with the capability of moving into higher education but no family or personal aspirations or experience that would lead them to do so.

The strands of the Guide most applicable to the project are the partnership and performance strands although the attempt to boost parental involvement might move into the territory covered by the participation strand. The project moved through all the levels in strand one of the Guide.

Outcomes

A series of activities have taken place in this project, moving from the establishment of partnership and agreeing of scope, targets and criteria for the project to the development of a project plan, evaluation plan and agreement on useful baseline data.

A full round of visits to higher education institutions and obtaining of feedback from visits took place and new partners are involved for year two. A further outcome was a successful application for Higher Education Funding Council funding for an extended phase of the project.

The project encountered problems in engaging parents in the initiative; an event to raise parents' awareness was poorly attended. However, help has been sought from the parents showing interest in the project in the task of engaging more parents and these lessons built into the second phase of the project.

The consultant to the project believes that a key to its success has been the very strong sense of ownership felt by partners and the time and detailed discussion spent in the development of the project delivery model. Clearly focused, task based meetings produced coherent proposals. A further essential ingredient was the flexibility built into the project, which allowed partners autonomy in delivering the elements for which they were responsible.

The Guide has been used by the learning city manager, and the evaluator and the project manager found the Guide a useful reference tool in the planning of the project. The Guide has also provided a clear framework within which to set evaluation activities. However, the Guide does not offer practical examples of how to undertake the kind of evaluation exercises necessary such as setting baseline data, providing a framework for participant feedback or the development of a model to assess impact.