Social value and its impact through widening participation: A review of four programs working with primary, secondary & higher education students

Abstract

In 2017 the Office of Widening Participation conducted a programwide analysis of the Social Return On Investment (SROI) to evaluate the impact of four Widening Participation programs at Western Sydney University (WSU). The programs evaluated were Fast Forward, Strive Towards Educational Participation and Success (STEPS), First Foot Forward, and Pasifika Achievement To Higher Education (PATHE). The overlapping aim amongst the four programs is to increase higher education participation rates, particularly for students coming from low socio-economic backgrounds. The SROI framework provided a holistic analysis by intertwining qualitative and quantitative data. The analysis showed that each program-albeit with differences-produced a collection of positive outcomes, and made important progressions to increasing and widening participation for "non-traditional" students. This is verified by the SROI ratio which is represented as a return, for every dollar invested-the combined four programs equated to an average return of $5.78 for every $1 invested.

The social return on investment model: a systematic literature review

“…Regarding the 91 papers demonstrating the legitimation function of SROI, 60 studies were published in Anglo Saxon countries, of which 22 were published in the UK (Iafrati, 2015; Parks and Brownlee, 2014), 16 in Canada (Akingbola et al , 2015; Shi et al , 2019) and 13 in the USA (Kousky et al , 2019; Ramon et al , 2018). Interestingly, the sector legitimized by the SROI is mainly the welfare sector, particularly health, with 31 studies (Aguilar-Agudo et al , 2019; Goudet et al , 2018; Searles et al , 2016), social inclusion counting 13 studies (Hoffmann et al , 2014; Mihalopoulos et al , 2020) and other sectors such as well-being, education and justice (Akingbola et al , 2015; Lund, 2015; Ravulo et al , 2020).…”

A systematic review of widening participation: Exploring the effectiveness of outreach programmes for students in second‐level schools

“…Other outcomes measured included college going and career self‐efficacy (Hamel, 2015) and plans—a retrospective measure that asked participants to judge the influence the intervention had on their college enrolment, higher education preparation and career options (Kaul et al, 2016). Ravulo and colleagues (Ravulo et al, 2020) evaluated the social value of four different widening participation programmes in Australia using a Social Return on Investment (SROI) approach. Interestingly, in the Zacharias study (2018), the programme was only seen to have an impact when schools were highly engaged in the school‐university partnership.…”

“…These included teaching and learning activities, tutoring, guidance counselling, mentoring, financial advice and support, college familiarisation, and parent and community workshops, conferences and events. Some of these multidimensional interventions were run as summer schools (Barkat, 2019; Hamel, 2015; Kaul et al, 2016) and others were conducted in school (Zacharias et al, 2018) or after school (Avery, 2013) or varied between the two (Ravulo et al, 2020).…”

Impacto de la eficiencia en la gestión de la política educativa en salud integral de Lima Metropolitana

“…Finalmente se analiza artículos sobre la calidad educativa como política pública: 1) La falta de empleo en la India en Asia, está sujeta a las vocaciones y la no importancia a la primaria y la secundaria ya que no la consideran imprescindibles, por esa razón la búsqueda de la calidad educativa son los retos de una nación que analizan sus impedimentos y soluciones innovadoras (Yash y Wilson, 2020) 2.) La mejora de la calidad educativa en Chile propuesto por la gestión pública es gracias a los docentes a quienes se les exige la mejora de las competencias curriculares en el estudiantado, asimismo la innovación y perfeccionamiento constante (Oyarzún y Cornejo, 2018).3) (Ravulo et al, 2020) Este artículo trata sobre el acceso a la educación superior de los estudiantes no tradicionales de zonas rurales de la educación básica donde se plantea estrategias de calidad educativa para que adquieran conocimientos y puedan acceder a la educación superior.4) Para lograr la calidad educativa la participación comunitaria e fundamental para promover acciones educativas en bien de la educación es una revisión de propuestas sobre participación educativa de Iberoamérica desde México. (Bravo, Ramírez, Escobar,2020).5)La formación continua de docentes de educación en América Latina mediante programas de gestión pública que busca la mejora de las competencias pedagógicas para la mejora de la calidad educativa.…”