Peer review of proposals for evaluation of the Diamond Student Support Reforms

The Diamond review recommended that we monitor and evaluate the implementation of the reforms, and we accordingly prepared a draft evaluation plan.

The peer review endorses our proposed approach to evaluating the impact of the reforms in three stages, as follows:

• A preparation phase devoted to ensuring that systems for generating and using information are developed appropriately to facilitate robust mid-term and final impact evaluations. To include continuation of the Student Income and Expenditure Survey series, and the securing of relevant administrative datasets.
• A mid-term evaluation phase focused on measuring outputs and emerging outcomes, principally focusing on the analysis of the survey and administrative data to which access has been secured in the preparation phase, with additional qualitative work.
• A final impact evaluation phase, to measure outcomes and emerging impacts, again based mainly on analysis of datasets previously secured and qualitative work.
• The peer review notes the external influences impacting on student participation in higher education, and the challenges of identifying the difference made by the financial support we provide. 
• It recommends adding to existing datasets and planned surveys by developing further studies to better understand student   choices and experiences in higher education.