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Evaluation Approach

 

1.  Introduction

The Tertiary Education Strategy sets out the government’s medium- to long-term strategy for tertiary education. It:

• articulates the broad goals for the tertiary education system
• provides vision and direction on how the tertiary education system can meet the needs of students, research users and wider stakeholders
• sets a framework to guide planning and funding.

In general, the strategy focuses on improving the ability of tertiary education organisations to manage for improved outcomes, rather than setting specific outcome targets. This is to be achieved through a mix of shifting attitudes and culture and the implementation of new funding and accountability policies.

The Ministry of Education has been charged with monitoring and evaluation of the Tertiary Education Strategy. Monitoring of the strategy involves measuring progress of the tertiary education sector towards the outcomes articulated in the Tertiary Education Strategy, using a range of indicators. Evaluation will focus on determining the value, merit, worth and significance of the strategy.

2.  Focus

A particular focus of the evaluation will be on the success of the strategy in encouraging positive change in the tertiary education sector. In doing so, the evaluation will not just be concerned with the document itself, but its success as a means of encapsulating and promoting the overall package of tertiary education reforms.

The evaluation will have a summative element in terms of determining the overall effectiveness of the current Tertiary Education Strategy. However, it will also have a very strong formative focus in terms of identifying lessons learnt that can shape and inform the development and implementation of the next strategy.

It is recognised that the evaluation will not be able to establish specific, causal links in most cases. The evaluation will be looking for associative links and evidence from people involved in the sector of how the strategy influenced their thinking and actions.

3.  Purposes

There are three broad purposes for evaluating the current Tertiary Education Strategy:

1. Assessing the overall effectiveness of the current strategy in promoting and achieving change in the tertiary education sector.
2. Informing the development of the next Tertiary Education Strategy, in terms of approach, structure and overall scope
3. Informing the implementation of the next strategy, in terms of managing the change process and communicating clear priorities to the sector and stakeholder groups

Common to these purposes is improving our understanding of how a tertiary education strategy can act effectively as a change management document and process to influence a set of desired outcomes.

4.  Four dimensions

The evaluation is being considered in terms of four dimensions: merit, value, significance and impact (as illustrated in the figure below).

These dimensions lead to a set of four overall questions:

Merit

Has the Tertiary Education Strategy been a useful and useable document?

Value

Where has the Tertiary Education Strategy added value to the tertiary education system?

Significance

Where has the Tertiary Education Strategy enabled significant changes?

Impact

To what extent has overall change followed the direction of the Tertiary Education Strategy?

The first two dimensions deal with the internal effects of the strategy on the tertiary education sector, while the last two address the effects of the strategy beyond the sector.

5.  A staged approach

The evaluation will be a staged project, providing timely information to regularly feed into the development of the next strategy. In developing the stages, we will need to balance when things need to be known (to influence the next strategy) and when it will be possible to find things out (given the time it takes for change to occur and be evident).

The three stages cover:

1. What do we need to know to formulate the next Tertiary Education Strategy?
2. What do we need to know to implement the next Tertiary Education Strategy?
3. What has been the overall effect of the 2002/07 Tertiary Education Strategy?

Evaluating the TES

• Home Page
• Evaluation Approach
• Stage One
• Stage Two
• Stage Three
• Summary Table