Hayton, A 2025 ‘Reflections on evaluation of widening participation initiatives in England: : The emergence and development of NERUPI

For this special issue of ‘ACCESS’ looking at the evaluation of equity and widening participation in higher education, my focus is developments in NERUPI (the Network for Evaluating and Researching University Participation Interventions). NERUPI set out to provide a collaborative space for colleagues involved in planning and evaluation of widening participation and equity (WP) initiatives. The NERUPI Framework (Hayton & Bengry-Howell 2016), which underpins the Network, is now 10 years old and was developed to address some of the dilemmas that were confronting evaluation of WP in higher education. This paper describes how a network such as NERUPI can combine understandings from educational theory along with insights from practice while continuing to take account of policy and reporting requirements. In this paper I outline the context for the creation of the Network and the NERUPI Framework, considering the impact of some recent changes in research, practice and policy on its development. Rather than exploring particular evaluation approaches and methods, I focus on how we aim to create a collaborative and reflexive environment for innovative evaluation. Policy changes described here relate mainly to England, where the majority of our members are based, and where WP activities of HEIs are regulated.