In this trial, Achievement for All resulted in negative impacts on academic outcomes for pupils, who received the programme during five terms of Years 5 and 6 (ages 9 – 11). Children in the treatment schools made 2 months’ less progress in Key Stage 2 reading and maths, compared to children in control schools, in which usual practice continued. The same negative impact was found for children eligible for free school meals. Target children (those children the intervention specifically aimed to support) also made 2 months’ less progress in reading, and 3 months’ less progress in maths. The co-primary outcome finding (whole-group reading, and target children reading) had a very high security rating, 5 out of 5 on the EEF padlock scale.

Given the size of the effects and the consistency of negative findings, these results are noteworthy. Of particular importance is the impact that the programme had on target children, and children eligible for free school meals.

Alongside academic outcomes, the evaluation also sought to assess Achievement for All’s impact on other measures, including the attendance at school of target children and pupils’ resilience-related outcomes. The evaluation found that the programme did not improve pupils’ self-esteem, goals and aspirations, perceptions of how supportive their families were, or target children’s attendance. However, children in Achievement for All schools were more likely to report that there was an adult in their school who cared about and supported them.

The negative findings are unlikely to be a result of schools failing to effectively implement Achievement for All. Although schools may not have delivered all elements of the programme as the delivery team had intended, the evaluators’ analysis suggests that better implementation was not associated with improved outcomes; indeed, they conclude that better implementation of some elements of the programme may even have been associated with more negative impacts.

One factor that may have contributed to the negative impact on pupils is the flexibility of the programme. While some schools commented that they found this beneficial, others would have preferred a more defined and structured approach. Several teachers also commented that they could not identify how the programme could lead to a direct impact on pupil learning. It may also have been the case that other school priorities began to compete with, and overshadow, the priorities set by the Achievement for All action plan at the outset of the programme.

Negative impact on pupils may have, in part, also been caused by the resources that schools invested in the programme, at the expense of other activities. Schools commented that certain aspects of the programme came with a number of time and logistical demands which may have financial consequences, and it may be the case that schools in the control group, which didn’t implement Achievement for All, used their resources more effectively.

On the basis of these highly secure findings, the EEF concludes that, in this trial, AfA did not improve pupils’ academic outcomes and had a detrimental effect on learning.Schools currently delivering Achievement for All should carefully monitor and evaluate whether it is having the intended impact.

Given the reach of the programme to date, this result is likely to raise a number of questions, including whether schools should still use the programme. Here we attempt to provide some answers.

The addendum report, published in April 2021, shows that AfA had broadly the same negative impact on a second cohort of pupils who began the trial in year 4, whose school received the programme for 6 terms (January 2017-December 2018), and whose results were taken 7 ½ terms after AfA delivery began. Cohort 2 children in AfA schools made 2 months’ less progress in reading on average, compared to children in schools that did not receive the programme. Cohort 2 target children also made two months’ less progress in reading, while cohort 2 children eligible for FSM made one month less progress in reading. All children, AfA target children, and FSM-eligible children in this second cohort, who were in the Achievement for All schools, made two months’ less progress in maths, on average, compared to equivalent children in schools which did not receive the programme. The evaluation of cohort 2 found that the programme did not improve pupils’ self-esteem, goals and aspirations, perceptions of how supportive their families were, perceptions of how supportive their schools were, or target children’s attendance. However, cohort 2 FSM-eligible children in Achievement for All schools were more likely to report higher levels of goals and aspirations.