This project aims to transform how the UK Parliament’s Education and Engagement service evaluates its democratic engagement programmes. It builds on Cristina Leston-Bandeira’s extensive work on the UK Parliament’s approach to democratic engagement.
Faced with acute declining levels of trust, the UK Parliament has considerably expanded its democratic engagement programmes. However, it has been shown that, whilst prolific, these programmes are not as effective as officials would like and that better evaluation would help to enhance practice.
This empirical project combines Leston-Bandeira’s research with Dr Clarke’s expertise in education assessment and evaluation methods to map the Education and Engagement service’s current practice of evaluation.
In initial interviews with service staff, Clarke and Leston-Bandeira discovered that the service currently has a superficial and fragmented approach to evaluating its democratic engagement programmes. This negatively impacts their ability to review activities and understand which aspects are and aren’t effective – impeding the development and quality of their programmes.
This project’s findings will therefore help the Education and Engagement service to develop a more sustainable and useful framework to evaluate their activities, and therefore to deliver more meaningful democratic engagement programmes.
This project is funded by the 2024–2025 Research England Policy Support Fund.