Evaluation
Understanding our impact and supporting continual learning and improvement is essential to ensure we target resources effectively. Our evaluation team works to ensure that what we do is evidence-based.
That work covers 3 different strands:
Evidence informed planning and practice
Our dedicated evaluation team reviews and collates evidence from around the world to feed into our engineering and technology outreach delivery and decision making. Drawing on our own evaluations and those conducted by other organisations, we learn from the best published research and identify gaps in knowledge where we may be able to test new approaches.
We're currently working on a series of Rapid evidence reviews, and the first two - looking at what works to build engineering and technology career aspirations in girls, and how STEM clubs can increase all students’ aspirations for engineering and technology careers - can be found here.
The reviews will also be shared on Tomorrow's Engineers.
Testing and evaluation
We want our work with young people to make a difference, so we evaluate our outreach programmes to understand what is working, make changes and improvements and demonstrate impact.
We share the results to add to the collective understanding of what works well and where we can improve. You can access the headlines and for each of our programmes below.
Producing and sharing learning
To support the wider community we share our learning on evaluation methods and on what works in STEM outreach through a range of resources and activities. Our tools and methodology are available on the Tomorrow’s Engineers website, we hope other organisations will find them useful as they evaluate their work.
These resources include guides to designing survey and conducting evaluations with young people, an interactive measures bank with sample questions and our impact framework for engineering outreach as well as webinars and tutorials on how to get the most out of them.
The full archive of past evaluation reports is available here.
We evaluate The Big Bang Fair through surveys gathered at the event. In June 2024, over 2,400 students and nearly 300 teachers completed a survey about their experience at The Big Bang Fair and the benefits they feel they gained from participating. For a summary of key findings, please see the infographic below.
Big Bang at School is a unique STEM initiative designed for schools, providing them with the tools to organise a customised event within their own educational institutions. Participating schools gain access to various resources, guidance, and financial support for hosting the event. The overarching aim is to showcase the diversity of STEM careers and engage students in hands-on STEM activities.
Published in May 2024 this report presents the findings from our 2022/23 impact evaluation of Big Bang at School (BBS). The purpose of this evaluation is to understand the effect of the programme on students’ knowledge, attitudes and aspirations related to engineering and STEM more broadly. To achieve this, we administered two surveys to students – one before participating in a BBS and one afterward.
Energy Quest (EQ) is a curriculum-linked workshop for students in Years 7 to 9 developed by EngineeringUK and funded by Shell. It is designed to help young people learn about the role of sustainable energy and renewable technologies in engineering, and to encourage them to consider engineering careers as an option. CFE Research, has been independently evaluating EQ over the past three years, exploring changes in the impact students perceive across different iterations of the content. Their report presents the findings from over 1,200 students and nearly 100 teachers who completed a survey after taking part in an EQ workshop. This is the final year of CFE’s process and impact evaluation, considering the effectiveness of the revised Content 3 of Energy Quest.
Alongside this independent evaluation, we conducted a smaller pre-post evaluation to look at changes in key outcomes for students. We analysed matched data for 104 students who took part in Content 3 workshops in 5 schools.
Download the CFE Research report
Download the pre and post report
This evaluation drew on surveys with over 550 students and 130 teachers taking part in the Robotics Challenge heats. We explore which students take part in the programme, their experiences and the benefits they feel they gained from the programme. See the infographic or download the full report to view our findings.
In October 2022, a stand-alone optional session, 'Introducing Robotics' was launched as part of the Robotics Challenge programme. To understand whether the lesson has an impact on students’ interest in taking part in robotics or coding activities, we piloted a pre and post evaluation in the 2022/23 academic year. See the Introducing robotics lesson report for findings from our pilot evaluation.
This report provides on overview of EngineeringUK EDI bursary schemes implemented during the 2022/23 academic year.
Our bursary schemes operate through several of our programmes (Robotics Challenge, Big Bang at School and Big Bang Fair) as well as supporting access to Neon activities. We evaluated their impact using a mix of monitoring data, surveys and interviews.