Evaluation of sparqs – Scottish Funding Council

Background

In January 2006, the Scottish Funding Council (SFC) issued an invitation to tender for the evaluation of sparqs (student participation in quality Scotland). Sparqs is a development service for student representatives across all colleges and higher education institutions in Scotland. The ultimate aim of the service is to improve the quality of the learning and teaching through student involvement.

Task

Sparqs is run by the National Union of Students Scotland and funded by the SFC. Therefore, the SFC was seeking to commission a study to evaluate the success of sparqs in achieving its objectives, measure the impact of the service, and provide advice on the future of the service and the promotion of student involvement in quality enhancement.

Assignment

We were successful in our bid and started our work with the SFC in early 2006.

The evaluation of sparqs was a challenging and exciting assignment involving a wide range of detailed consultations with colleges and universities in Scotland as well as national stakeholders. We also undertook an online survey of students to gather quantitative information.

Findings

The output of the assignment was a detailed report with solid evidence to evaluate the operations, effectiveness and impact of sparqs. The report (insert link) has informed the client’s future funding and development decisions, and has influenced the progression of sparqs.

Client feedback

The feedback we received from our client was excellent in all areas - outputs, presentations, quality of the staff, communication, billing and overall performance. The client stated that:

“The report was incredibly helpful in clarifying the direction of developments in this area and as evidence to support our way forward”

“YCL provided a very helpful mid-way run-through of emerging findings which enabled us to forward plan our next steps”

Overall remarks were “Very pleased, top 10 stuff!” and “I would be happy to consider York Consulting for future work”

Since then…

We have developed further work with SFC delivering a Policy Development Course and two other projects; a study of Learner Choice in Further Education and an evaluation of Shared Services.

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