Implementation of Achieving Excellence Areas

The aim of this project is to describe and assess the implementation of the AEA strategy in the first year of delivery, in order to provide learning for the DfE on what worked well and how the strategy and implementation can be refined and improved for future delivery in 2017 and beyond. The project will establish:

For each area:

Overall:

A process evaluation and action learning approach is proposed to answer the research aims detailed above. Bidders are invited to propose the best methodology to deliver this, however we currently envisage a combination of:

• Semi-structured interviews with local stakeholders (telephone or face to face) - approx. 10 stakeholders in each AEA area, at 3 different points.

• Content analysis of documents relevant to the set up and early decision-making of AEAs;

• Case studies (approximately 6), either of areas or of schools within broader AEAs, to describe the activities, views on the support package available and how they have been implemented, and broader engagement with the strategy.

Across all methods the contractor will be expected to work iteratively with DfE to ensure research tools and approaches reflect the local context and intervention approach within each area.

Alongside these methods, the contractor for this project will be expected to work alongside DfE to develop logic models for the changes expected to be affected in each AEA, based on the problems/needs and interventions specific to that area, once these have been defined. These models will be used to sense-check methods being used in the process evaluation, and to make recommendations for data collection after the life of the one-year process evaluation.