Many organisations in the UK provide support for STEM education through hundreds of individual schemes and initiatives. Good evaluation provides insight into an activity's impact on young people to inform future improvement.
Meaningful evaluation helps to ensure that funding is well-used, and when findings are shared with teachers and lecturers, evaluation can help them to select appropriate initiatives for their students.
From 2011 all activity in the STEM Directories will publish evaluation information for teachers and lecturers.
Does it work? Better evaluation: better STEM
In order to encourage the effective evaluation of STEM initiatives, the National STEM Centre has developed guidance for organisations undertaking first evaluations. This guidance is based on detailed government recommendations, Summary of Public Sector Guidance for Evaluation with respect to STEM Initiatives, and recommendations from the Research Councils UK, RCUK Evaluation Guidelines.
Following feedback from a range of STEM organisations, the final guidance, Does it work? Better evaluation: better STEM, is available in hard copy from the National STEM Centre. The PDF may be downloaded from this page.
Case studies
To exemplify the evaluation guidance we commissioned several evaluation case studies. These can be found in the pdf below 'Does it work? Evaluating STEM initiatives - Case Studies'.