Interim evaluation: 2020 – 2025
Promise, purpose and progress
Ufi are pleased to share the latest external evaluation of our work.
Drawing on extensive research including surveys, interviews, and analysis, the report highlights Ufi’s catalytic role in supporting innovation, widening access to skills, and building a thriving VocTech ecosystem.
The independent report from York Consulting assesses the effectiveness and impact of our strategy “Learning without Walls: Beyond 2020”, covering our grant funding, direct investment and strategic partnership programmes from 2020 – 2025. It captures our progress, celebrates our successes, and offers recommendations to shape our future work.
Although this is an interim assessment the findings are a strong endorsement for our mission, delivery and impact. As the report states:
“Ufi is making real progress against its fundamental ambition of opening-up access to vocational skills and breaking down barriers to learning”.
- York Consulting, Final Report: Interim evaluation of Learning Without Walls: Beyond 2020
To ensure we have a complete picture of the impact of our work, we will begin our full evaluation once 90% of the activities in scope (by value) are complete. We hope to publish the full evaluation report for our 2020 – 2025 strategy cycle in early 2027.
The evaluation shows that…
1. Ufi grant funding remains an essential catalyst for innovation in vocational technology
“Much of the work Ufi has funded through the current strategy is unlikely to have happened, or if it had, it would have taken longer and/or been on a smaller scale, had Ufi not become involved.”
Our ‘funding plus’ approach – combining financial support with mentoring and networking – is a key differentiator.
2. Ufi Ventures is an engaged and valued investor in technology for skills and workforce development
“We have not worked with a better investor. We felt like Ufi genuinely cared about us – we were not just another number – and they put everything into it. They did their research and advised on different markets. They added a lot of value compared with other investors.”
Our offer goes beyond capital – providing strategic advice, networking and impact focus helping portfolio businesses scale and achieve impact.
3. Ufi is developing trusted and transformative partnerships
“It feels like we bring equal voices to the table. This is an authentic relationship that will help us to achieve strong impact.”
By developing genuine and trusted partnerships Ufi is maximising the collective efforts of organisations across the UK skills ecosystem – enabling joint ventures, expanding networks, influencing policy and amplifying the reach of VocTech initiatives.
4. Ufi is delivering significant impact on the skills ecosystem
Ufi continues to play a unique and essential role in the UK skills ecosystem, helping learners move from disconnection to belief – in their skills, their value, and their potential. As the report concludes:
“Were Ufi not to exist, and assuming that their place in the market wasn’t taken by an equivalent organisation, then it seems unlikely that much of the innovative work supported through Learning Without Walls: Beyond 2020 would have been able to take place.”
Recommendations from the external evaluation
As part of the report York Consulting shared their recommendations as to how we can improve our work. External feedback is important to us and we are grateful for their insights. We have shared their recommendations, along with our responses to them.
Recommendation
Ufi now has a more succinct evaluation framework which summarises the outputs, outcomes and impact measures associated with its grant funding, ventures and strategic partnership activity. This can now be shared across Ufi's network to further demonstrate the organisation's commitment to performance measurement and impact assessment. It should also provide the basis for the final evaluation of the Learning Without Walls: Beyond 2020 strategy.
Our response
We agree that sharing our Evaluation Framework would be a useful and helpful thing to do. The Evaluation Framework is now available on our website, and will continue to explore ways of making it accessible and engaging – ensuring we articulate how it links back to Ufi's Theory of Change.
Recommendation
Ufi is advised to continue using its current grant funding processes and to continue working with projects in the ways that have generated such positive feedback to date. It is a 'funding plus' model, with wraparound support that is held in high regard by grantees. It may well be an exemplar of best practice and the evaluation has found no reason to change it. The same also applies to the selection criteria used to filter and progress grant funding applications. Maintaining the high levels of additionality generated by the current criteria should be an ongoing objective as it is an intrinsic component of value for money.
Our response
As outlined in our strategy for 2025 – 2030, we will be continuing to evolve the delivery of our successful grant funding programme. As part of this work, we will explore opportunities to share our approach as an example of best practice, supporting others to understand and learn from our experience.
Recommendation
The ventures companies value Ufi's input and see them as prominent, forward-thinking figures in the VocTech space. They nonetheless remarked that Ufi's administrative requirements are on the heavier side compared with other investors. It may therefore be worth Ufi engaging with a selection of co-investors to compare monitoring and reporting requirements and to explore the reasons for any significant differences. Whilst this may not result in any changes to how Ufi operates, it could help to confirm that Ufi is striking the right balance between necessity, rigour and streamlining / efficiency.
Our response
As institutional investors we are required to ask more questions than angel investors. For founders without experience of this, it may come as a surprise.
We recognise that data is crucial in demonstrating impact. Through our ongoing engagement with the wider investment community, we continue to evaluate our processes to ensure we are collecting data that is both important to demonstrate impact, can enrich the businesses we support and ensure they are investment ready. We will also continue to encourage our portfolio companies to develop and embed processes for measuring and reporting the social impact of their work.
We believe our approach is beneficial for the portfolio companies we support, and hope our approach will encourage other investors to increase the importance they place on social impact.
Recommendation
Following the 2024 UK general election there will doubtless be new consultations, white papers and policy announcements in education and skills. Stakeholders with a wide range of interests and objectives will be jockeying for position and seeking to have their voices heard. It is therefore important that Ufi continues to actively promote VocTech and the contribution it can make to the achievement of new policy goals. This should be done as vociferously as it is now, if not more so. Working in close collaboration with the strategic partner organisations will add weight to Ufi’s arguments.
Our response
Helping to catalyse change across the policy and regulatory landscape is a key objective for our 2025 – 2030 strategy. We will continue to take a strategic and purposeful approach to our work: showcasing and supporting VocTech solutions that demonstrate impact and the art of the practically possible; engaging with key stakeholders; and building on our Strategic Partnerships and collaborations to foster and nurture systems change. We will also continue to develop our enrichment support on impact, evaluation and the importance of gathering impactful data.
Recommendation
Several grantees have suggested that Ufi should establish a user testing pool that can be accessed by projects on an as-needed basis. However, the practicalities of this would not be straightforward for Ufi, not least because different projects have different target audiences and therefore require testers with different characteristics. A better strategy would be for Ufi to encourage grantees to build payments or other incentives for user testing into their delivery models. More or more prominent guidance on this topic for grantees may also be advisable.
Our response
VocTech must be developed with the people it’s meant to serve, not just for them, which is why Ufi place so much importance on the need for project-specific user engagement, testing and feedback.
Whether a grant applicant has a close connection to the prospective user group is a key part of our decision making when awarding grant funding, as we know it is a frequent indicator of future success. We actively encourage organisations to involve users in the design phase of their projects and to develop a deep understanding of users and their needs.
Due to the broad range of organisations Ufi supports, and the benefit to projects of directly engaging their users in developing and testing, it is not practicable for Ufi to develop a user testing pool. While incentives can increase the numbers of users engaging with testing, our experience shows that feedback earned in this way is often unreliable.
We will continue to champion the importance of user testing and explore how we can further develop and share our collective experiences, including through our Impact Network.
Recommendations
Some grantees suggested a role for Ufi in helping projects to successfully engage potential customers – and large organisations especially. Ufi is well-respected in its field, but that does not guarantee that it could make introductions with the NHS, for example, nor other large public sector bodies. Ufi could instead look to ensure that all grantees have realistic expectations about the challenges and timeframes involved in forging new commercial relationships with large organisations. Grantees could also be encouraged / reminded to think about customer engagement strategies (where relevant) from an early point in their project lifecycle.
Our response
Customer development and engagement is hard work and takes time. We will continue to encourage the organisations we work with to devote sufficient time to this aspect of their projects, emphasising the need to be pragmatic and realistic in developing their commercial relationships.
While Ufi are unable to make direct introductions, we work hard to create the conditions for success. We do this through our offers of enrichment and by developing opportunities of 'managed serendipity' which expose the organisations we support to prospective clients. Our commitment to enrichment and support remains part of our 2025 – 2030 strategy.
Recommendation
Work undertaken in 2020 proposed the introduction of a ‘Ufi barometer’ – essentially a periodic survey targeted at Ufi’s stakeholder network and the wider VocTech community to identify trends and evolutions in the sector, plus Ufi’s role within it. A survey or barometer of this kind could certainly add value. It would make sense to incorporate its design and launch within the scope of the final evaluation of Learning Without Walls: Beyond 2020. In doing so, the appointed consultants should give due regard to Ufi’s updated evaluation framework to avoid overlap and duplication.
Our response
We agree with the recommendation and are exploring how we can incorporate a barometer into our work. The barometer is not intended to be a measure of our success, but to draw together indicators from across the sector which would inform our strategic direction and ongoing programme delivery.