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Our approach

The College’s approach to evaluation and improvement is grounded in three central ideas:

  • All young people need and deserve access to safe spaces, where they can build trusted and developmental relationships with other young people and adults;
  • Youth practitioners can be trained and supported to create and maintain these safe spaces for young people, and to build on these foundations to create high quality social and emotional learning opportunities; and 
  • Meaningful evaluation is a core component of reflective and equitable practice, which in turn sits at the heart of informal and non-formal learning.

We believe that these ideas are applicable to all youth settings, and that if we use shared approaches based on these ideas, the sector will be able, over time, to develop a powerful and practical collective evidence base. 

To put these ideas into practice, we believe we need a shared definition of social and emotional learning, and evaluation should focus on continuous improvement, supported by collecting ‘good data’.