What's next

For Evaluation...

We are proud of the progress made in embedding evaluation across our programmes, but we recognise that there is more to achieve.

In the coming year, our focus will be on ensuring that our evaluation work robustly answers three core questions:

  • What is the impact of our work?
  • How is the impact happening? 
  • Who is experiencing the impact, and in what ways?

To achieve this, we will develop and deepen our evaluation practice through the following priority areas:

Increase Collaboration

We will continue to expand cross-institutional partnerships, including with our academic colleagues. These collaborations have already enhanced the capacity and innovation of our evaluation work — and we are committed to building on this momentum.

Stronger Dissemination Processes

Evaluation is only impactful if its findings are used and shared. We will strengthen our dissemination processes initially through our committees to ensure that insights reach colleagues — both within the university and externally — who can use them to improve practice and outcomes for students. To support this, we will place greater emphasis on the quality and replicability of our evaluation, embedding these considerations early in the planning stages.

Increase Student Involvement

Students bring unique perspectives to our evaluation work — both as participants and as co-creators. Over the next year, we will embed the student perspective deeper into our evaluation processes, for example through involving them in the development of Theories of Change. Their input will help us better understand the mechanisms of change and ensure that our evaluations are meaningful and inclusive.

Embedding a Stronger Internal Evaluation Culture

A stronger internal evaluation culture is the key to sustainable, quality evaluation. By sharing best practice, encouraging peer learning and drawing on each other’s skills and strengths, practitioners can unlock greater efficiencies and innovation in their evaluation. We will foster this by providing targeted training and capacity-building opportunities.

If you have any questions or want to know how you could get involved, please contact us.

Evaluation Showcase for 2025-26

This section highlights one of our most anticipated evaluations planned for next year. It will use particularly rigorous methods.

Contextual Admissions – Quantitative

Contextual Admissions is one of the university’s most significant initiatives to improve access for underrepresented students. It affects a large number of applicants and directly shapes who enters Loughborough, with implications for both student access and success. As such, this section highlights our plans to evaluate this initiative next year.

This evaluation presents an opportunity to collaborate with interested academic colleagues, building on our collaboration goals and increasing the quality of our evaluation. There is also strong buy-in from practitioners across the institution, ensuring that the work is grounded in real-world implementation and insight.

Importantly, this evaluation will aim to establish a causal link, allowing us to move beyond descriptive analysis and better understand the actual impact of contextual admissions on student access and success. Combined with insights from our qualitative evaluation with Alterline, we anticipate a rich, detailed picture of how our contextual admissions is working—and where it can be improved.

While contextual admissions approaches vary across the sector, we hope our findings will offer practical value to others and make a strong contribution to a broader evidence base that supports more equitable admissions practices across the UK.

The project has been split into two phases:

Phase 1

Explore whether the proportion of underrepresented students (those from an IMD Q1 postcode or eligible for free school meals (FSM)) has increased at Loughborough as a result of making a contextual offer to these students.

By analysing the number of students who used their contextual offer and the extent to which it was used (2 grades lower, 1 grade lower or met the standard offer), we can determine the number of students who entered Loughborough University as a result of our contextual offers policy.

Phase 2

Using a Quasi-Experimental Design (QED), we will explore the outcomes of students admitted through a contextual offer compared to their peers who entered Loughborough with a standard offer.

As outlined in our APP, we see awarding gaps between students from different socio-economic backgrounds. This evaluation will explore the links between our admissions policy and student outcomes, allowing us to plan targeted and timely initiatives to improve our students’ experience and facilitate their success.

Findings from this evaluation will be triangulated with the qualitative evaluation conducted by Alterline.

Contact us

Send email