Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 11
11
The Department developed an evaluation plan to assess Kickstart’s impacts early on in the scheme’s...
Conclusion
The Department developed an evaluation plan to assess Kickstart’s impacts early on in the scheme’s development.42 This plan has two main elements. The first element is an analysis of Kickstart participants’ employment records, time on benefits, and earnings after their placements have finished, compared with the equivalent outcomes for similar groups of people who did not participate in the scheme. This should allow the Department to test the assumptions it made in the scheme’s business case about Kickstart’s impact on individual participants. The second element is a ‘process evaluation’ including a commissioned survey of participants, employers, and gateways.43 The Department expects this survey to ask employers about the extent to which the jobs they provided through the scheme were additional to what they would they would have provided anyway, in the absence of scheme funding.44 Beyond this, however, the Department is not planning to carry out a robust evaluation of the additionality of the jobs created under the scheme, or their wider economic impact. It believes that this would not in practice be possible: such an evaluation would require the comparison of employers in the scheme with a comparator group of employers which did not participate, but the Department considers it would be hard to identify such a comparator group, since the scheme operated so widely with employers across the nation.45
Government Response
Not Addressed
HM Government
Not Addressed
3.8 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target implementation date: Spring 2023 3.9 The department has publicly committed to publication of the evaluation of the Kickstart Scheme once this is complete. It is aiming to publish process evaluation findings in Spring 2023, subject to ministerial approval and associated governance processes and protocols. 3.10 The evaluation is ongoing and includes large scale surveys to capture the views and experiences of Kickstart participants, employers and gateway organisations. It also includes qualitative case-study research in selected Jobcentre Plus districts across Great Britain. The evaluation is considering how experiences and outcomes from the scheme vary and how participants’ and employers’ characteristics, local context and local approaches to delivery have affected experiences. 3.11 The department will continue to evaluate the longer-term outcomes for Kickstart participants after they have completed their six-month jobs. This is part of a robust evaluation of how the Kickstart Scheme has improved employability and chances of sustained employment of those at risk of long-term unemployment in the 16- to 24-year-old age group. The department will use findings to improve current employment support and inform how it will deliver employment support in the future.