Invitation to Tender: SHINE Sunderland Evaluation
SHINE Sunderland is a 10-year partnership in which more than £11 million will be invested into secondary schools in the City of Sunderland to help raise GCSE attainment.
We are seeking proposals from partners who can provide evaluation support to the SHINE Sunderland fund during the first, establishing phase, of its delivery period (March 2025 – September 2027).
Evaluation Support Phase 1
The SHINE Sunderland fund was established based on local insights, and we are committed to ensuring that the success of the fund continues to be driven by the perspectives of schools and stakeholders in Sunderland.
In this phase, we hope to:
- Establish an evaluation framework for assessing the impact of the SHINE Sunderland fund that is co-created with schools and key partners, encapsulates learning and local/contextual perspectives, and identifies key measurement parameters.
- Build capacity with school partners to help them to design and implement effective and proportional evaluation plans for their projects.
- Capture and respond to the experiences and perspectives of schools and key partners in the fund, to amend, adapt and respond as we learn together.
We are seeking an evaluation partner to support with the following outputs during this phase of the evaluation:
- Support for SHINE school grantees to develop a Theory of Change for their projects, as a basis for monitoring and evaluation of their interventions.
- Bring together the SHINE Sunderland team and relevant stakeholders to develop a Theory of Change for the fund as a whole.
- Co-creation of an evaluation framework for the initial phase of programme implementation with the SHINE Sunderland team, representatives from Sunderland schools, and wider Sunderland stakeholders.
- Establish appropriate key metrics for monitoring the implementation of the fund as a whole, and measure progress towards outcomes.
- Conducting an annual consultation with schools and teachers involved in SHINE Sunderland to understand the strengths and challenges of the fund and provide insights for further refinement and development.
We are seeking a partner who has:
- A strong track record of working with schools and in partnership with stakeholders.
- Experience in supporting schools and teachers to evaluate their work.
- Experience in Theory of Change development, and facilitating collaborative meetings between multiple stakeholders.
- Experience in developing evaluation frameworks for large, long term programmes, and providing clear recommendations for success measures and metrics.
- Experience in creating and reporting on stakeholder consultation and feedback exercises.
Our intention is to work with the evaluator over three academic years with the possibility of extending evaluation work beyond this time period. There may also be follow-up activity beyond 2027.
If you have any further questions about this work, please contact Helen Rafferty, Senior Programme Manager at SHINE helenrafferty@shinetrust.org.uk