The Costs and Benefits of Creative Partnerships

14 September 2010

Institution PricewaterhouseCoopers

Full reference PricewaterhouseCoopers (2010) The Costs and Benefits of Creative Partnerships. Newcastle: Creativity, Culture and Education

PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP (PwC) was commissioned by CCE to prepare a report that analyses the economic costs and benefits of Creative Partnerships. The analysis is focussed on assessing the costs of delivering the programme and the benefits accruing to two distinct groups: learners and their parents; and schools and the teachers within them.

Key findings

Overall, Creative Partnerships is estimated to have generated or is expected to generate a net positive economic benefit of just under £4bn. Expressed as a ratio of the benefits to the costs, we estimate that every £1 invested in the programme delivers £15.30 worth of benefits.

Approach

The approach used to estimate the economic costs and benefits of Creative Partnerships is based on the development and application of a logic model, which is a high level map of the transmission mechanism through which inputs to the programme deliver impacts to each of the potential beneficiaries (learners and their
parents; and schools and their teachers).

Among other things, the logic model shows that key impacts accrue to learners, in terms of higher lifetime earnings that arise as a result of improved educational attainment; to the wider society, through reductions in exclusion and the social implications that this has; and to teachers and schools, through improved teacher morale and reduced recruitment and retention costs.

As far as possible, within the constraints of the available data, the approach we have used is consistent with the requirements of HM Treasury "Green Book", the Government's guide to evaluation and appraisal. To that end, the benefits are measured in incremental terms and at the whole economy level.

Download the report