Government policies designed to redress social inequality are often evaluated by qualitative methods, which prevents the establishment of a causal relationship between policy objectives and outcomes. Social programmes to broaden participation in higher education have been a feature of government policy in Europe, the US and Australia during the past three decades. The principal instrument of policy optimisation has been university partnerships with disadvantaged school students. The Australian Labor Government's Higher Education Participation and Partnerships Program (HEPPP) is the most recent iteration of policy to broaden access to university. Unlike many of its European counterparts, the Australian policy includes funding criteria for evidence-based partnerships and rigorous evaluation methods. In the new era of accountability for publicly funded programmes between universities and disadvantaged schools, the qualitative research methods and formative analysis that dominate evaluation research in this field will need to be augmented by quantitative research that enables summative evaluation against public policy objectives. Transforming the evaluation paradigm is required to determine the impact of university-school partnerships on higher education participation. (Contains 1 table.)