The challenge

Aimhigher is a national programme, jointly funded by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Department for Business, Innovation and Skills (BIS). The programme aims to widen participation in higher education by raising awareness, aspirations and attainment among young people from under-represented groups.

Quadrant was commissioned to review the Aimhigher communications arrangements and function, to assess how well they are working and where improvements could be made.

What did we do?

Our work programme was particularly focused on engagement, to understand the perspectives of a variety of key stakeholders, and included:

• Semi structured interviews with managers responsible centrally for Aimhigher, local delivery
• partners and support organisations.
• Self-completion communications effectiveness questionnaire
• Online survey with the area partnerships

Following this extensive engagement, we developed findings and a series of considerations for improvements that formed the basis of a workshop with key stakeholders and a communications review report.

What was the breakthrough for HEFCE?

We were able to identify both short and longer term improvements that would significantly benefit a communications structure and arrangements that had evolved over several years of the programme. Cut-through was provided regarding the major issues and how they could be resolved.