Understanding our short to medium term impact

Hello Future runs a number of evaluation projects (e.g. surveys and interviews) every year that we ask you to get involved with. This is because we want to better understand the likelihood of learners wishing to go into Higher Education (e.g. University, Higher level apprenticeships etc) and to understand if the skills, knowledge and feelings you have around going into Higher Education have changed over time. This then helps Hello Future to better understand if our programme helps you with this (we call these short to medium term outcomes). We explain more about these projects a bit later.

HEAT and understanding our long-term impact

Alongside this, we collect lots of personal data about all the learners we work with (e.g. your name, date of birth, postcode etc ), every time we go in to schools and colleges. We also collect data about all the different Hello Future activities learners attend. We collect this information in a database called HEAT (Higher Education Access Tracker). This database (HEAT) also links up with other databases, including one that tells us if the learners we have worked with eventually go into Higher Education (This is called our long-term impact).

By looking at all the data we collect together in HEAT and through our surveys (e.g. surveys conducted by the national Uni Connect partner CFE and our own Future Selves survey) together with the learner data we routinely collect and track in HEAT, we can build up an even bigger picture and understanding about how Hello Future might have changed the way learners think about and prepare for Higher Education. We want to know if and if the activities we deliver that aim to develop this impact on Higher Education choices and progression.

In 2023-24 Hello Future are working with a company called Cosmos Engagement Ltd to help us look at all of this data. We hope to report back on it very soon, so please keep checking back at these pages. You can find out more information about how Hello Future collects, uses, shares and looks after your data (including your data rights) by visiting our privacy pages here

Evaluation Projects

We run evaluations every year to understand our impact at programme level and also to understand how effective individual ad groups of interventions are. We also want to understand about the quality of the work we do, so frequently ask learners about their satisfaction levels. Click here to learn more about our current and recent projects:

My Future Self

Since 2021 Hello Future have been running am award winning longitudinal survey called My Future Selves to measure the impact of our target outreach programme. This is the programme that aims to provide Cumbrian learners with information and skills that will encourage and support them to progress into Higher Education. We commissioned a third-party company called ‘Cosmos Engagement’ to help us with this.

The survey helps Hello Future, our partners, schools and colleges to better understand where learners might need support on a school by school and year group buy year group basis, by giving us immediate insights about learner needs across the five main themes of this programme:

My Transition into Higher Education
My Ideas, self-belief and personal expectations
My Confidence and Attainment expectations
My Knowledge of and understanding about HE
Developing awareness of me and how to reach my goals

Understanding how learners self-report on each of the themes each year also helps Hello Future, schools and colleges to better understand if and how things have improved for learners.

You can read our latest and previous reports here:

Future Selves Baseline Report 2022

Future Selves Final Report 2023

Attainment Raising

Reading Evaluation

In the Autumn Term of 2023-24, Hello Future asked Cosmos Engagement Ltd during the Autumn term of 2023-24 with two participating Cumbrian schools. We asked Cosmos to evaluate this project using a small n study. It included pre and post interviews with year 7 participants and staff; pre and post York Assessment of Reading Comprehension (YARC) tests, selected validated scales from the new TASO Access and Success Questionnaire (ASQ), and post-intervention interviews with the Hello Future team. A control group of students in each school was used in order to gain a clearer read on progress made by the intervention group.

The evaluation showed that the intervention has the potential to positively impact reading levels. This was evidenced by:

YARC reading scores across a range of reading skills, improving more in the Intervention group vs the Control group.
Students self-reporting increased confidence in their reading ability and ability to participate in lessons.
Teachers reporting positive progress with vocabulary.
Hello Future intervention practitioners reporting positive progress from the start to the end of the intervention.

Although the evaluation has demonstrated positive impact, the evaluation has also provided useful recommendations for further improvement and development of the intervention. The full report can be found here.

Current evaluation projects still to come:

Maths and English Subject Tutoring

During 2023-24 we are also in the process of evaluating our Maths and English Subject Tutoring programme. This is a project that we are running in partnership with FutureU (Lancashire’s Uni Connect programme) and our joint partners University of Central Lancashire (UCLAN) and Edge Hill University.

Breaking the Mould

Check out our Breaking the Mould school activity booklet here

Our current and recent evaluation work