Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority Case Study

Introduction to CPCA

The Cambridgeshire & Peterborough Combined Authority is a combined authority covering the ceremonial county of Cambridgeshire in the East of England.

The challenge

One of the main challenges faced by the CPCA was the lack of a consistent approach to gathering Destinations data across the combined authority. To be efficient in their approach, there was a need to understand whether their Adult Education Budget was being spent effectively. There was also a need for easier, quicker and a seamless transfer of information between government & education providers.

To guarantee that the students were being equipped with the right level and quality of education, they had to ensure that they were running the right learning provision in the region.

At the time, they were using a phone-based approach which took a lot of staff time and effort and were looking at not only scaling this task but improving its efficacy.

Finally, the CPCA also wanted to gain a long-term overview of their learner progression in order to assess the effectiveness of their budget and the quality of their curriculum

Why CPCA chose to partner with Purlos

The CPCA’s main goal was to foster collaboration across colleges to ensure that information transfer was seamless and more importantly, meaningful so that it could affect positive outcomes for students as well as the educational institutions.

After evaluating Purlos based on its track record with the Further Education market in a short span of time and the depth of data that its Destinations product provided, the CPCA wanted to try out an automated approach that could save them time and resources.

A successful execution of the project would make the CPCA a leader in innovation with regards to Destinations tracking.

How Purlos responded

Purlos met with local Further Education providers and the CPCA individually and then followed it up by meeting collectively to understand what the individual goals of the education institutions were and how they could align themselves as a group.

Purlos developed an optimum engagement strategy and developed a Destinations question-set based on feedback from all parties to tailor it to their needs.

The Purlos team then quickly and efficiently trained the staff of affiliate colleges and in just a few weeks were up to speed and sent out 10,000 messages to students via WhatsApp.

To ensure  a customised approach, different question sets were designed for different outcomes (Employment, Education, Apprenticeship, NEET, etc.)

The data was standardised across all parties

Purlos followed up with all parties on a regular basis and updated them with individual reports

The Results

All colleges now agree on a standardised question-set and approach to connecting with students. Moving forward as the Destinations landscape evolves, the group will decide on the best & most consistent approach based on data collected.

As this is a 3-year project, work is currently underway to determine which areas of the curriculum and local learner provision may need extra support and intervention. Data collected through the Purlos Destinations dashboard will be used to back this up and the medium term aim is to bring more education providers affiliated with the CPCA,  into the project,

Using the Destinations dashboard has meant an easier and faster transfer of information between government & education providers. Purlos segments the data so that the CPCA can track the individual progress of each individual college that is funded by the Adult Education Budget.

Having transitioned from a phone-based approach which took a lot of staff time to using Purlos Destinations, the CPCA has saved an approximate of 300 hours of time that would have been spent on the phone.

As a result of the data that is visible on the Destination dashboard, the CPCA is now able to get a long-term view of their learner progression due to all the data being trackable and auditable.

To learn how Purlos can help you leverage better Destinations data, book a call with an expert HERE