Evaluation

Evidence based learning

We have a dedicated team to evaluate our work and understand our impact. Evaluating our programmes is essential to allow us to develop and refine successful and impactful activities for young people. We’re able to use this insight to improve our work and ensure that everything we do is evidence-based.

Secondary school student writing on whiteboard

Young people interact with exhibits and stands and activities at The Big Bang Fair

What makes a difference

We want to know what works, and how to engage more young people with engineering and technology careers. As well as evaluating our own activities, we analyse insight across the STEM outreach sector.

Rapid evidence reviews

Our rapid evidence reviews bring together available evidence across the STEM outreach landscape. We collate the findings to determine gaps in research, key findings and learnings.

STEM clubs and their ability to increase students’ aspirations for engineering and technology careers draws on evidence on STEM clubs and their ability to increase students’ interest in and engagement with engineering and technology careers
Interventions to increase girls’ aspirations for engineering and technology careers brings together the available evidence on interventions that aim to increase girls’ aspirations for engineering and technology careers

Find out more

A group of young people around a table, they're using materials on the desk to build

Young person in school science lab conducting an experiment

Our programmes

We evaluate our programmes to understand our impact and support continual learning and improvement in our programme development. Evaluation is essential to ensure we know how to inspire young people to choose a career in engineering and technology. We collect evidence from teachers and young people to determine where we can improve. Highlights from our evaluations include:

74% of students who attended The Big Bang Fair 2024 spoke to a STEM employee, and 80% of students want to do more science, engineering and technology activities
After taking part in an Energy Quest workshop, students were more likely to agree that they know about the types of things engineers do in their jobs, compared to their response beforehand
After taking part in Big Bang at School in 2022/23, 74% of teachers felt more confident in speaking to their students about careers in engineering having taken part in Big Bang at School

We share our evaluations to add to the collective understanding of what works well and where we can improve.

Read the evaluations

Outreach impact

We want all engineering outreach and engagement activities to have a real and positive impact in informing and inspiring young people about engineering and tech careers. We developed an impact framework for engineering outreach that reflects how we believe engineering outreach activities can collectively make an impact.