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

• what programmes or interventions were delivered, how were these defined?;
• what went well in designing and setting up the AEA intervention plan? What could have gone better?;
• how are programmes and interventions being delivered? How well are these operating?
• what challenges or barriers have there been to successful delivery?;
• how engaged are stakeholders with the intervention plan in their area? Do they understand the AEA strategy and what it means to be an AEA?
• what early indicators of change we might look for?

Overall

• what aspects of implementation across the different areas should be replicated, changed or avoided for successful future roll out?;
• whether there was any variation across areas and/or models of delivery that should be considered in designing future implementation plans.

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.