2020 Shortlist | The Access Project
The Access Project
Shortlist – Improving Impact – charities with 26+ paid staff
Who they are
The Access Project (TAP) is an education charity that helps talented young people from disadvantaged backgrounds go to top universities by providing 14 to 18 year olds with a programme of free personalised tuition, in-school support and university admissions guidance. The charity’s volunteers are trained and supported to be effective tutors who work with students for an hour a week to raise their grades. In addition, a dedicated school-based staff member mentors the students so they have the knowledge and support to make strong university applications. Our results show this approach works.
What they’ve achieved
This year, TAP is supporting 1,500 pupils across London, Birmingham and the Black Country, and the East Midlands. This is a huge expansion from the charity’s roots in 2008, when North London teacher Alex Kelly asked friends to help his talented students by providing one-to-one tuition. After five-years refining its approach, The Access Project is an impact focused, proven expert at boosting young people’s chances of academic success. TAP is rigorous in reaching the most disadvantaged students — 94% of students come from the most disadvantaged backgrounds, and the proportion of TAP students who get into a top university has doubled as a result of the charity’s adoption of the UCAS STROBE service.
The Access Project has achieved this by codifying its programme and investing significantly in impact measurement in order to understand what’s working and what needs to be improved. This has resulted in a well-designed programme of tutoring and in-school support. Every year TAP’s six-person-strong Impact Team analyses internal data to make sure that the programme works effectively. The charity also commissions independent evaluations that compare its students with students from similar backgrounds. Finally, the Impact Team seeks regular feedback from schools, students and tutors. This combined approach to evaluation allows TAP to make regular adjustments. For instance, when the charity struggled to recruit volunteers in social mobility cold spots throughout the East Midlands, it responded by developing a pilot project for online tuition. Rolled out in 2018, online tuition has helped TAP students in the East Midlands to perform better than their equivalent peers.
The 2019 UCAS data shows TAP’s students are four times more likely to place at a top university compared to similar peers, while TAP’s GCSE students make half a grade more progress on average than their peers, in their tutored subjects.
Why they were shortlisted
Rigorous data collection informed the board’s strategy over the past five years. Judges were impressed with the board’s ability to shift and refine the charity’s approach to supporting its beneficiaries to improve impact. Evidence of board-led actions was found in the creation of a new role (Director of Impact and Strategy) and the sustained focus on discussing impact during board meetings. As a result, trustees provided clear leadership in defining both delivery strategies and the desired outcomes.
