SHINE’s vision is that there are no barriers to learning for children from low-income backgrounds in the North of England. We achieve this by developing and funding innovative and sustainable programmes that work to improve educational outcomes for children living in areas of deprivation in the North of England.
We invest in early stage ideas and then work closely with grantees to understand their impact and scale-up the most effective approaches. SHINE values a hands-on, partnership approach with our grantees. We provide support in impact measurement, helping our grantees to progress through the stages of an evidence journey.
Working in partnership
- SHINE wishes to work in partnership with the teachers and schools we fund. In addition to the funding we provide, we aim to support our grantees in managing their impact through advice, training or other capacity-building support or through funding for external evaluation costs.
- We will be clear at the application stage about our expectations around evaluation. While SHINE has developed our own approach to evidence and impact, we are also clear that our grantees are leading the evaluation of their own projects and we respect their professional judgement. We hope, however, that by working in partnership we can achieve greater outcomes for children from low income families.
- Where a funded organisation or school has commissioned an external evaluation of a project, SHINE is prepared to work closely and appropriately with the external evaluator.
Importance of learning
- In supporting early stage ideas, we want to work closely with grantees to understand their impact and test out routes to scale for most effective approaches. We therefore want to build in resources to ensure learning and reflection happens effectively, whether that is building in feedback loops to make practical improvements and real-time adjustments or about using evaluation data to make more strategic changes.
- We evaluate our own grant-making practices through seeking regular feedback from applicants and grantees and commit to adjusting our practices based on feedback.
- Our approach to evidence is based on the notion that learning about what doesn’t work and why is as valuable and important as celebrating success
Realistic and proportionate evaluation
- Our approach to evaluating grants will focus not just on what outcomes are produced from interventions, but also how these outcomes are produced and the contextual factors that affect these outcomes. We feel this approach suits the kinds of projects SHINE funds: new or pilot projects or programmes and initiatives looking to scale.1
- SHINE’s expectations around evaluation are in keeping with the size of the grant, the capacity of the grantee and the stage of growth of the innovation.
- For early stage ideas, we will support grantees to collect data to help them have a sense of whether intended outcomes are being met.
- As the innovation develops further, SHINE and the grantee will increase expectations around the quality of data and the level of analysis. A comparison group should be used to analyse the difference made to participants by the project at an appropriate stage of development.