Our aims
We aim to foster a culture of evidence-based practice by embedding evaluation into the fabric of student success initiatives. Our goal is to enable education without boundaries by providing insights and evidence of ‘What works’ to help students achieve their ambitions.
SSEC aims to:
- Establish a culture of evaluation at Greenwich and beyond.
- Deliver and support activities across the evaluation cycle in collaboration with internal and external partners.
- Enhance the impact of student success interventions by generating and disseminating knowledge about good practice - understanding what works, what doesn’t, and why.
What we do
- Evaluate Impact: We lead and support evaluation projects - both internal and external - that assess the effectiveness of student success interventions.
- Build Capacity: Through workshops, resources, and collaborative projects, we help staff and teams across the university develop their evaluation knowledge and skills.
- Foster Collaboration: We work with students, staff, and external partners to co-create meaningful evaluation strategies that drive continuous improvement.
- Share Insights: We disseminate findings and best practices to contribute to the wider higher education sector’s understanding of inclusive and effective evaluation.
Areas of work
Support the implementation and delivery of the Access and Participation Plan (APP)
The Office for Students requires all higher education providers who want to set a fee above the basic cap to submit an Access and Participation Plan (APP) that sets out how they will improve equality of opportunity for students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access, succeed in, and progress from higher education.
This page provides information about the University of Greenwich's Access and Participation Plan for 2025-29 and how we plan to address the risks to opportunity that our students might experience. Our plan includes six targets, four intervention strategies, and over 30 activities that aim to address gaps in access, experience and outcomes for our students.
Targets
- Increase the number of new entrants from POLAR 4 Quintile 1 areas (Access target)
- Reduce the attainment gap between Black and White students (Success target)
- Reduce the attainment gap between Asian and White students (Success target)
- Reduce the attainment gap between Index of Multiple Deprivation (IMD) Quintile 1 and Quintile 5 students (Success target)
- Reduce the gap in progression to graduate employment or further study between Asian and White students (Progression target)
- Reduce the gap in progression to graduate employment or further study between IMD Quintile 1 and Quintile 5 students (Progression target)
APP Implementation
On behalf of the Student Success Board, the Access and Participation Working Group (APWG) monitors the implementation of the Access and Participation Plan (APP). This includes tracking progress against the plan’s targets and objectives, ensuring that activities:
- Deliver value for money
- Meet the expectations of the Office for Students (OfS)
- Have a measurable impact on student outcomes.
Find out more about the Access and Participation Working Group
The monitoring process has been developed by the Student Success Evaluation Centre, which works in collaboration with staff involved in the delivery, evaluation, and oversight of APP interventions. This includes members of the APWG, delivery leads and intervention leads.
Intervention strategies
- Intervention Strategy 1: Access
- Intervention Strategy 2: BAME Attainment
- Intervention Strategy 3: IMD Attainment
- Intervention Strategy 4: Progression
Support the evaluation of the Student Success Sub-Strategy
SSEC is supporting the evaluation of range of intervention that have been designed to help us meet our strategy targets related to continuation, the ethnicity awarding gap, progression, and the National Student Survey.
Evaluation support, development and training
Learn more
Meet the team
Dr Nathaniel Pickering – Associate Director of Evaluation
Leads the SSEC and the university’s institutional approach to evaluation.
Nathaniel brings extensive experience in higher education evaluation and is a founding member of the Evaluation Collective, a sector network promoting inclusive evaluation practices. He also developed #ChangeBusters, a game-based resource that helps university staff create theories of change and evaluation plans.
Jade Boyce – Student Success Evaluator
Delivers staff development activities and supports SSEC evaluation projects.
Jade is a second-year PhD candidate in Higher Education, researching equitable education and ethnicity degree awarding gaps.
Nora Takacs – Student Success Coordinator
Works with the Access and Participation Plan (APP) stakeholders to monitor and report on activity. Nora has contributed to multiple projects, including the OfS Apprenticeships Engagement Programme. She brings extensive experience in coordinating and supporting complex projects, with a strong focus on streamlining processes and enhancing operational efficiency.
Contact us
For more information or support, please email our team SSEC@greenwich.ac.uk