SEER Service
The SEER service is a collaborative HE model designed to effectively and efficiently deliver required regulatory and institutional outcomes through the provision of a range of services relating to data and evidence building, evaluation and research, in the area of Access and Participation. SEER is exclusively for small, specialist and newly registering providers.
The overarching objective of SEER is to ensure all providers have access to expertise and efficient delivery solutions to support their data, evaluation and research commitments as part of Access and Participation Plans.
The full service Model includes three work strands, which have been identified as particularly challenging for small providers to deliver independently:
Advice: Strategy and compliance
Data collection, collation and analysis; targets
Research and evaluation
SEER service flow:
Provider context and capacity assessment in relation to data, evaluation and research capabilities
Review of commitments in provider Access and Participation Plans (if in place) and other key provider agendas (e.g. recruitment, student experience, retention and graduate outcomes)
Assessment Report, including identified priority areas, gaps and practice recommendations
Agreed SEER Action Plan to address gaps and priorities in provider data, evaluation and monitoring
Examples of SEER activity:
Improvements to data collection and infrastructure
Data analysis
Provision of evaluation and reporting toolkits
Evaluation and reporting
Support for annual Access and Participation Plan Impact Reports and other required reporting to the OfS
Design, development and delivery of identified research projects
Monitoring and review
Recommendations for improvements to practice (following evaluation) and resetting targets/activity
Strategic advice, coaching and input to provider committees/reporting
Communications and insight reporting (internal and external)
Supporting communications to the Office for Students and other priority sector bodies (e.g. TASO)
Added value through partnership
Over the next few years, SEER will increasingly become a collective voice for the small, specialist and new provider experiences in relation to the data, evidence and evaluation of access and participation outcomes. Our collaborative approach will produce benchmarking, aggregations of data that help to mitigate the issues of small individual provider data sets, and contextual, data-driven, evidence-based insights that will inform the broader sector, feeding into regulation.
The Need
In 2019, the Office for Students (OfS) launched its new approach to Access and Participation regulation. The new 5-year Access and Participation Plans (APPs), required for registration under the full Approved Fee Cap category, decisively re-frame the agenda to an outcomes focused, risk-based approach to regulation.
The OfS are firm in their expectation that providers adopt evidence based, data-driven performance assessment and measures. Access and Participation Plans are required to be underpinned by robust evaluation and research, and a rich evidence base drawn from internal and external (sector, national) sources.
For the first time, the OfS have introduced an explicit financial commitment for “Research and Evaluation” as part of provider’s commitments.
At the same time, the OfS emphasise the importance of collaboration across and beyond the sector to effectively meet regulatory requirements and progress outcomes in access and participation. In collaborative measures providers must show, “a demonstrable commitment and credible strategic approach to collaborative working with a clear purpose and rationale” (OfS, 2019).
The SEER service is a small, specialist provider response to these requirements.
For small, specialist and newly registering providers, who generally have less capacity and resource in this arena, the SEER collaborative delivery model enables these commitments to be effectively met (accessing the expertise needed to deliver these ambitious objectives well); in an affordable and efficient model (collaborative partnership with multiple providers, accessing central services).