On 14 March 2025, the ACSES team hosted a further meeting of ACSES Equity Hub: A Community of Practice (CoP) for Student Equity Evaluation in Perth and online. The CoP continues to bring together equity practitioners, program managers, and those working in evaluation from across the sector, to share insights and strengthen networks.
During the CoP we were honoured to have colleagues Sonal Singh and Sarah Ellis from the University of Technology Sydney present on key components of the UTS Pathways Plan, including the U@Uni Academy, and First Year Success Program (FYSP):
U@Uni Academy is a flagship two-year program for low socio-economic status (SES) high school students, starting in Year 11, which combines on-campus intensives, online workshops, academic mentoring, and personal support, and which offers direct entry to UTS for completing participants.
After the U@Uni Academy, students are supported by the First Year Success Program to ensure smooth transition and ongoing success.
The programs help address systemic access barriers by offering places to students unlikely to receive them via traditional ATAR-based admissions. UTS has seen impressive conversion and graduation rates since the introduction of the programs.
Sonal and Sarah discussed UTS’s approach to regular monitoring, evaluation, and longitudinal reporting of progress. This has included program logic models, an Assessment Framework tracking the development of defined, measurable skills, pre/post surveys, interviews, and ongoing refinement based on data.
Key points included:
A structured evaluation framework was built into program planning, including program logic and mapped indicators. UTS’s Social Impact Framework enabled robust data tracking and performance monitoring.
Evaluation tools are used to identify students who would benefit from interventions early, not just for outcomes measurement.
Longitudinal tracking and dashboards follow students from entry through graduation and beyond.
Emphasising student voice in evaluation is key to the programs, with students actively involved and their perspectives valued (and recognised and rewarded for their time and contributions).
Sonal and Sarah highlighted case studies of students’ journeys – gaining confidence, receiving mentorship, and progressing to postgraduate studies or careers. They emphasised how the credibility and institutional support for these initiatives have benefited from their evaluation and proven impact.
The CoP also included break-out discussions with colleagues across the sector on the relevance of this work, and the trials discussed in the previous day’s Equity Frontiers Forum, for their own institutions, and further robust discussions on evaluating equity initiatives, and collaborative planning for 2025.
A big thank you to Sarah and Sonal for sharing their work. We are planning future events where colleagues can share learnings in this area (more information to come), and we also encourage everyone to share any resources we can include here on the Equity Hub website to help grow our collective knowledge base.
In the immediate term, our focus is on completing and launching the first two of our badged streams in the ACSES Evaluation Learning Program. Stay tuned for an update.
