Post-18 choice of part-time study

Tender description

We are seeking a contractor for a research project into part-time education. This project will form part of the evidence base for the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding that was announced by the Prime Minister in February 2018. The purpose of the review is to look at ways to ensure more people have a genuine choice of high quality technical and academic options. As part of the review, this research project has been designed to understand how prospective part-time students make their choices, the barriers that they face to entering education and what enablers there are to facilitate their entry. The research aims are: • To identify the proportion of the post-18 population who have considered, or are considering or may consider entering study. • To identify prospective learners' personal characteristics, circumstance and demographics. • To understand the goals and aims of prospective part-time learners when making decisions. • To understand the barriers and enablers that prospective part-time learners face when making decisions. • To understand goals and aims, barriers and enablers faced by prospective mature part time learners The project will comprise a survey of prospective learners with follow up qualitative interviews. Prospective learners are likely to be a difficult target population to access, but we envisage a panel/omnibus survey to be one effective method for surveying them. However, we are happy for contractors to put forward other innovative methods for data collection. We would expect the survey to be used to recruit individuals for the follow-up qualitative work. Please note the Deadline for EOIs is 5pm, Friday 29th June 2018