The Evaluation of the Raising the Participation Age Locally-led Delivery Projects (RPA) 2011 to 2012
01 October 2012
The DfE commissioned Isos Partnership and NFER to carry out an evaluation of the Raising the Participation Age (RPA) Locally-Led Delivery Projects (LLDPs) during 2011/12. This evaluation built on two previous evaluations of the RPA trials.
The overall aim of the third evaluation was to explore the implementation of local RPA projects, to measure their impact and assess projects’ value for money (VfM). NFER lead the quantitative (baseline and follow-up surveys) and VfM aspects of the project, while Isos Partnership collected case study data from 18 areas.
Two separate reports have been published: one presents the case study data, the second report details the findings from the two surveys.
Key Findings
- Local areas’ confidence for achieving RPA increased between the baseline and follow up surveys. This was despite some local areas setting very ambitious targets.
- Most areas had identified priority groups of young people for who they were targeting RPA activities. These included learners with learning difficulties and/or disabilities, looked-after children or care leavers and teenage parents.
- Local areas were undertaking most of their RPA activities to help them to ‘understand the cohort’ and ‘determine local priorities’. Indeed, the highest median level of expenditure across the six pre-established priority areas was for these two priorities.
- Areas found it difficult to measure impact within the evaluation timescales (around six months). Providing costs on a clear and consistent basis was also a challenge for local areas.