*4.3. Evolution of Practice Based on Local Evidence Base versus Adaptation of Practice from Another Institution, Customized to Local Need*

A third point of comparison is the use of evidence in both cases. TA21 combined the institutional evidence base for the success of low-SES students with the academic literature and policy indicators to determine how it could best have a "whole-school" effect within partner schools. This was an evolution of practice, which began with recruiting individual low-SES students for the TAP foundation course back in the 1990s. The greater their success, the more the team reflected that there must be many more talented, undersupported students in the schools, who could also benefit from progression to Trinity or another institution.

In LMH, there was a steep learning curve, as the leadership and college staff were committed to changing the socio-economic profile of the college and the university but did not have specific expertise in this field. The collaboration with Trinity enabled LMH to draw on its evidence base and to customize it for the Oxford context. This collaboration and "transfer" of expertise from Trinity to LMH over the first few years of the foundation year was pivotal in making the institutional change possible. Within Oxford, this meant the director of TAP and the LMH Foundation Year director addressing groups of fellows in different colleges within the university system, meeting with academics resistant to change on a one-to-one basis to discuss their concerns, addressing admissions committees, building external policy support for change through bodies such as The Sutton Trust and the OfS, and the principal of LMH leading the case for change at the heads-of-colleges level. The principal of LMH had himself been recruited from a major national newspaper to the position of principal, so he was acutely conscious of the rolling national debate regarding limited admission to the University of Oxford of low-SES students. The collaboration extended to building wider public support through media (radio, television, print media) and to bringing the TAP FC students and the LMH FY students together each year to consider how they could collaborate for change.
