St John’s Foundation, a community charity which works to help people in need across Bath and North East Somerset through investment in local organisations and charities, have partnered with ImpactEd Evaluation to evaluate the impact of three specific strands of their Foundation Fund:

1. Supporting preschool students in speech and language development
2. Working to improve family and community access to affordable nutritious food
3. Supporting primary school students in their foundational academic, emotional and behavioural development and wellbeing. 

In order to evaluate the impact of this fund on the lives of children across the Bath and North East Somerset area, St John’s Foundation and ImpactEd Evaluation are working on a three-year impact evaluation partnership.

ImpactEd Evaluation has created an evaluation framework which identifies key outcomes for each strand of funding. Around this, bespoke and validated measurement tools have been developed in order to reliably and accurately evaluate the impact of the programme on each outcome.

‍Findings from the pilot year

Having completed the pilot year of the funding programme and linked evaluation in 2022, ImpactEd Evaluation produced an end-of-year impact report which brought together both qualitative and quantitative findings of the first year of the evaluation. 

The annual report looked at the progress of pupil premium pupils across seven targeted primary schools, and compared this to local and national data.

Findings showed:

• A higher proportion of pupil premium pupils in the targeted schools met age-related expectations compared to schools nationally. This is despite the schools being in particularly deprived areas. 
• A narrowing of the gap between pupil premium and non-pupil premium pupils in terms of their non-cognitive outcomes (such as wellbeing and metacognition). 
• The fund has successfully worked to build professional self-efficacy and confidence in implementing interventions for children with additional needs (from qualitative discussions with teachers and early-years practitioners).

The evaluation of the first year also highlighted areas within the programme and evaluation worth refining to better meet the needs of the children in which this fund is aiming to serve. 

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Louise Harvey, Executive Director for the Foundation Fund

“We have enjoyed and benefited so much from our partnership with ImpactEd Evaluation, they work in a truly collaborative way, supporting constructive conversation and continuous improvement in all that we do. ImpactEd Evaluation share the same beliefs, ambitions and drive as St John’s Foundation to support children to enjoy and succeed with their education, this is extremely important to us. We see our relationship only gaining in strength and are looking forward to sharing the impact of all our work.”

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