
The methodology involves studying the effect of the school/department experience on individual student outcomes (what students achieve) and the extent to which student intake characteristics (such as their prior attainment, gender, ethnicity and social class) affect student outcomes.

These measures can also be used to examine the progress of specific groups of students such as those from low-income families, facilitating the targeting of additional support for disadvantaged students where progress may be less than expected. Value-added measures seek to establish whether students in different schools/departments make relatively greater or less progress over a specified period of time. While rarely used to date, these approaches might also be helpful in supporting the development of evidence-based policy and practice in widening participation, an area of critical importance to HE institutions (and associated funding criteria).

These techniques could be used by Higher Education (HE) institutions to inform aspirations and facilitate greater HE participation by disadvantaged students.
