EEF Round 3 Grants Announced

Education charity awards £11.4 million to projects to help disadvantaged children.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) today awarded £11.4 million to fund 25 projects which seek to raise the attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.  In total, the projects will work with 35,000 pupils in 425 schools across England.

19 of the projects, totalling £7.5 million, are targeted at children from disadvantaged backgrounds whose literacy levels at the end of primary school are below the expected standard.  Approximately 1 in 10 English secondary schools will be involved in these projects.

Last year 30,000 pupils eligible for free school meals left primary school without the ability to read and write confidently.  Evidence shows that over the transition from primary to secondary children from disadvantaged backgrounds can fall further behind their peers, making it even harder to catch up in secondary school.

All of the projects awarded funding will be independently evaluated to determine their impact.

Sir Peter Lampl, Chair of the EEF, said: “In England, a child’s background has a stronger bearing on their future than in almost any other developed country.  This tremendous group of projects aims to help those students who need it most.  The projects will be rigorously evaluated and if proven to be successful they will be scaled up.”

The Minister of State for Schools, David Laws, said: “We are determined to narrow gaps in educational attainment between disadvantaged children and their peers. The Pupil Premium directly targets extra money at these children, and through the Educational Endowment Foundation, we are supporting research into innovative programmes for raising attainment and narrowing the gap.

“Combined with our expansion of the academy programme, more rigorous exams, and tough action to tackle failing schools, we are delivering a comprehensive package of improvements to increase social mobility and create a world-class education system for every child."

The literacy catch-up grants focus on a variety of aspects of literacy, including comprehension, decoding and writing.  They include:

• £458,000 awarded to Real Action to test a didactic phonics programme delivered by university students to 400 pupils in London.
• £390,000 awarded to Dyslexia Action to test a computer-based phonics programme for struggling readers in 50 schools nationwide
• £218,000 awarded to the Book Trust to evaluate the impact of providing reading material and volunteer support to 900 children over the summer holidays.
• £400,000 awarded to Coventry University to test a school library-based programme which encourages pupils to enjoy reading.
• £393,000 awarded to Bolton Council to test a programme which seeks to enrich the vocabulary of students in 17 schools in the North West.

The EEF is expecting to announce more literacy catch-up grants towards the end of the year.

A further six projects, totaling £3.9 million, focus on other age groups.  They are:

• £415,000 awarded to the charity Creative Futures UK to work with 15 schools and test the impact of high-quality music instruction on academic attainment.
• £687,000 awarded to the London School of Economics and Hertfordshire Country Council to test the impact on attainment of a programme which seeks to improve the resilience and self-control of pupils in 30 secondary schools.
• £900,000 awarded to the Innovation Unit to work in 12 schools in the Midlands, North West and South East of England to trial a project-based approach to teaching.
• £382,000 awarded to School 21, a free school in East London, to develop a programme which seeks to improve attainment by improving pupils’ speaking skills and the quality of classroom dialogue.
• £1.4 million awarded to Success for All to work with 25 primary schools across the country to test a whole school literacy improvement programme.
• £121,000 awarded to the Primary Writing Project to work with 1,800 pupils in Portsmouth and test a structured approach to teaching writing.

Since its creation in 2011 the EEF has awarded £23.4 million to forty five projects that aim to improve the attainment of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds. The grants will involve over 275,000 pupils in over 1,300 primary and secondary schools across England.

The EEF is a charity set up by the Sutton Trust as the lead charity in partnership with Impetus Trust with a Department for Education endowment of £125m to boost the attainment of disadvantaged children in some of the country’s most challenging schools.

For further information, contact the EEF on 020 7802 1676 or email info@eefoundation.org.uk.