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The Wheeler Programme has teamed up with an outside organisation to assess the impact of its work with students.
The programme is using Impact Ed to measure how Wheeler students progress over their years with the programme.
The process begins with an online ‘baseline’ survey at the start of the five-year programme and then asks students to fill in regular surveys as the years go by to see how their motivation, metacognition, self efficacy, grit and goal orientation have changed.
It asks them about topics like how confident they feel about their school work, how well equipped they feel to plan for their future and to identify their own learning needs.
Paul Jennings, Head of Educational Developments and Partnerships at Wellington College, said: “We have teamed up with Impact Ed because although we are able to see first-hand the positive benefits the Wheeler Programme has for pupils over its five-year span, we want to be able to measure this and record it.
“Also, as the programme goes forward, we want evidence that we are designing our study days and residential courses to have the most impact on students.”
Vicky Fisher, from Impact Ed, said: “We are delighted to be working with Wellington College on the Wheeler Programme.
“In our education system, we invest substantial time, money, and energy in different initiatives and interventions to improve outcomes for pupils.
“But assessing what is working effectively and what isn’t is not an easy process.
“Over a six-month research process, only 3% of schools that we interviewed were confident in their impact evaluation.
“This means we don’t know whether specific programmes schools are investing time and resources into are having a positive, negligible or even negative impact on the young people they strive to support. ImpactEd works with the sector to change this.
“The Wheeler Programme is unique and we look forward to enabling the team to gain insights into what works well.
“The data we gather will help Paul and his colleagues understand the impact it has on pupils and to reflect on how to shape the programme for the future.”
Established in 2017, the Wheeler Programme is a fully-funded educational programme for around 100 selected state school pupils.
Twenty-four students are selected in Year 9 and the college helps support them until their graduation from the programme at the end of Year 13.
They start the programme with a five-day residential course at Wellington, where they experience life in a boarding school, and then take part in three or four study days a year, tailored to their age.
