A THIRD OF SCHOOL LEADERS USING THE TOOLKIT

A new survey has shown that 36% of school leaders are using the Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit to inform their spending decisions.

The Toolkit is an accessible summary of educational research which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.  It has been developed by a team of academics at Durham University led by Professor Steve Higgins.

The Pupil Premium provides schools with an extra £900 for every pupil eligible for free school meals in 2013/14.  A total of £1.875 billion is being allocated in 2013-14 and the average school in England receives over £83,000.  Schools have autonomy to spend the Premium in the ways they think will most effectively support pupils eligible for free school meals.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said today: “The Government is spending nearly two billion pounds on the Pupil Premium this year. The Pupil Premium is one of the few areas of government spending that is set to grow in the forthcoming spending review. It is vital that the Pupil Premium money is spent well, and used on those measures that can do most to improve results for our poorest pupils.

“I’m pleased to see that so many school leaders – and a growing number of classroom teachers – are turning to research on what works rather than simply relying on past practice. It is particularly heartening that the Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit has grown so much in popularity. But we still need to ensure that more teachers act on the evidence, and embrace the most cost-effective measures that can make such a difference to the learning and life chances of their poorest pupils.”

Dr Kevan Collins, chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said: “I’m delighted that increasing numbers of teachers and heads are using evidence to help them make decisions about how to spend the Pupil Premium.  As the Premium becomes a fixture in school budgets we’re trying to provide schools with the knowledge they need to make the informed decisions, as well as with advice on how to evaluate the impact of these decisions in the classroom.”

The survey of 1587 teachers was conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research and commissioned by the Sutton Trust.

For more information about the poll view the Sutton Trust’s press release here.

View the Teaching and Learning Toolkit here.

View the EEF’s DIY Evaluation Guide here.  The Guide is an accessible resource for teachers which introduces the key principles of educational evaluation and provides guidance on how to conduct small-scale evaluations in schools.

This invitation to tender provides a summary of the EEF and the data being generated by its projects. It then specifies in detail the data management task to ensure that the EEF is able to monitor the cumulative impact of its work and creates a lasting resource to be used more generally by researchers.  It also provides examples of the data that will be generated by projects. 

Proposals should reach the EEF by Friday the 31^st of May 2013: camilla.nevill@eefoundation.org.uk

Questions on the ITT should be sent to Camilla Nevill (Evaluation Manager) at the EEF by Friday the 17th May 2013.

The programme will see chess being taught within normal class time for one hour a week by accredited chess coaches. A 30-week curriculum is used to teach chess, this starts by teaching children how to play chess, before developing thinking skills through the use of chess problems. Each class teacher will also be trained in how to teach chess and will be encouraged to start a chess club in their school.

The majority of studies that link chess to academic attainment have been carried out abroad and included self-selecting intervention groups.  However a randomised controlled trial was carried out in Italy and this showed that chess had an impact on maths attainment. The EEF will be testing the programme as a randomised controlled trial, with 50 schools receiving the intervention in one year and 50 acting as a control group. Those in the control group will receive the intervention in the following academic year. Pupils’ mathematical abilities will be tested before and after the intervention.

The independent evaluation will be conducted by the Institute of Education.

Schools are currently being recruited to this project. If you are interested in taking part and your school is located in or near Bristol, Liverpool, Manchester, Leeds, London, Essex or Birmingham please email Chess in Schools and Communities at admin@chessinschools.co.uk or telephone them on 0207 935 3445. The project will be recruiting until the end of May 2013.

Lesson Study involves teachers working in small groups to plan lessons that address a shared teaching and learning goal. Group members then take part in reciprocal lesson observations and the lessons are refined, and the process is repeated. Case pupils, who typify a group of pupils within the class—for example low-attaining, middle-attaining and high-attaining—are selected, and the impacts of lessons on these case pupils are then monitored. The knowledge generated by this process is then shared with other colleagues.

Lesson Study is already widespread overseas, and there is growing evidence that peer observation and collaboration can improve teacher practice and pupil progress. Indeed, a major international report highlights Lesson Study and argues that ‘Making practice visible is a hallmark of the world’s most successful school systems’. This project aims to test this approach in England, and will be the first Lesson Study project at a large scale to focus on lower attaining schools and disadvantaged pupils.

Edge Hill University will train teachers from 80 schools in the North-West, East and South-West of England to deliver this approach over two years.

The project will be independently evaluated by the London School of Economics.

This project will test two different initiatives: ‘Mathematics and Reasoning’ and ‘Literacy and Morphemes’. The maths programme develops children’s understanding of the logical principles underlying mathematics, which is an important foundation for later learning. The literacy programme will see children being taught about morphemic spelling rules, which aid children’s spelling and reading comprehension. Teachers will be trained in the approaches, and lessons will then be delivered through electronic resources and online games that the children can access at school and at home.

The initiatives have both been previously tested with promising results, children that took part in logical reasoning training showed improved mathematical achievement compared to control children. Morphological training has also been tested in a study that involved a control group and those receiving the training showed improvements over and above the control group in terms of spelling. These two interventions are now ready to be tested as a randomised controlled trial.

Durham University will independently evaluate the impact of the project.

LTSS is an approach to teaching that aims to challenge pupils’ thinking and encourage group learning. LTSS lessons develop student understanding of key concepts that underlie scientific reasoning, such as variables, correlation and classification. However, more important than the content is the thinking processes that students go through. The lesson activities are deliberately challenging so the students have to work in collaborative groups to find answers to problems. They then reflect upon their answer and methods, and make comparisons with other group outcomes in order to agree a best class answer. Teachers will be provided with electronic lesson plans and presentation materials for each of the repackaged lessons and will also be provided with training to develop the pedagogical skills to promote higher order thinking.

The previous manifestation of this approach has been extensively tested over the past 20 years with promising results. Studies show significant improvements for pupils, and schools using the programme have been shown to score consistently higher in national science examinations than would be expected from their intake. The content and theory underpinning the programme has evolved over the years in the light of new theories on cognition, pedagogy and teacher training. This project will aim to test the effectiveness of the latest LTSS programme as part of a randomised controlled trial.

The Institute for Effective Education at York University will independently evaluate the impact of the project.

Schools are currently being recruited to take part in this project. If you are interested and your school is located in or near Southampton, the South West, Manchester, the North Midlands or the North East of England please email John Crossland at john@johncrossland.com or phone him on 07854309957. The project will be recruiting until the end of May 2013.

The Curriculum Centre's project is inspired by the research of Professor E.D. Hirsch of the University of Virginia. His work on cultural literacy is well known in the US, not least through its impact on literacy in pupils in a number of US states. The Curriculum Centre's programme is also informed by evidence on the teaching of reading and the acquisition of vocabulary. The rationale behind The Curriculum Centre's project is that children need background knowledge and understanding to be able to comprehend what they read. The Curriculum Centre has developed a programme, which consists of knowledge-rich reading material for use during literacy lessons and subject-specific and general vocabulary word lists. The associated teacher training emphasises consistent and sequenced use of vocabulary, direct instruction and teacher questioning. 

The importance of directly teaching vocabulary has been highlighted by a number of studies, which identify a vocabulary gap between disadvantaged and more affluent children. There is also growing evidence that those with a broad base of factual knowledge find it easier to learn more.The programme that will be piloted in this study makes use of the key features that have been found to be important when teaching children new vocabulary, and should help to address the vocabulary gap that exists between disadvantaged and more affluent children. The impact of Hirsch's work is gaining substantial interest from schools and policy makers in this country, so there is a strong rationale for testing the impact of background knowledge on literacy in primary English classrooms.

Birmingham University and Durham University will independently evaluate the impact of the project.

CAN CHESS BOOST SCHOOL RESULTS? WILL JAPANESE-STYLE LESSON STUDY IMPROVE TEACHING? EEF FUNDS EIGHT NEW PROGRAMMES TO TEST IMPACT ON PUPIL ATTAINMENT

Its advocates have long claimed that chess can play a big part in improving pupils’ mathematical and concentration skills. And in some countries – such as France and Hungary – it is given official encouragement on the curriculum. But until now, its learning powers have never been properly tested in English schools.

Today, the Education Endowment Foundation – a charity dedicated to finding the most effective ways to improve the performance of the poorest pupils and their classmates – is awarding a £689,000 grant to the organisation Chess in Schools and Communities to test the impact of structured chess instruction in primary schools. 6,000 ten year-olds in 100 primary schools in Liverpool, Bristol and Manchester will take part.

The EEF is also supporting seven other new programmes today. Among them is Lesson Study, a Japanese programme of collaborative lesson planning and classroom observation that is already widely used overseas. The programme emphasises the importance of teachers working together to help refine lessons so that they have a strong impact on low-attaining pupils. The EEF is contributing £545,000 towards the £1 million funding of a trial in seven UK areas including Manchester, Merseyside, Devon and Cambridgeshire.

A randomised control trial of chess teaching will compare the progress of pupils who take up chess with that of similar pupils who have not taken up the game. Pupils will spend an hour a week on chess over 30 weeks, learning how to play the game and developing thinking and problem-solving skills through chess. Chess clubs will also be established in the schools.

Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the Education Endowment Foundation and of the Sutton Trust, said today: “I played chess at school and competed in the under-11 national championships. I believe that through chess I developed important thinking skills. This trial will test the extent to which a structured approach to teaching chess in schools could improve pupils’ attainment in mathematics and other subjects.”

Malcolm Pein, Chief Executive of Chess in Schools and Communities, added: “Chess has been making a comeback in state schools in recent years, having become a preserve of independent schools in the 1980s. Fewer than one in ten state school pupils get the chance to play chess today. We hope that this trial will provide evidence of its impact, particularly on the poorest pupils, to convince many more heads to adopt chess in schools.”

Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said: “Together, these eight projects will increase our knowledge of how to help the children in our schools who need it most. Lesson study is a hugely promising model of professional collaboration and, if proven to be effective, could be a method of embedding research informed teaching throughout the country.”

A total of £4.3m in funding is being spent on the eight projects. The new projects will work with over 30,000 pupils in 380 schools.

The other projects will:

• Work with the Communications Trust to test a whole school approach to improving the speech, language and communication skills of disadvantaged pupils.
  
• Work with the Curriculum Centre to test the impact of a knowledge-rich curriculum on eight and nine year olds’ vocabulary and reading skills.
  
• Test the impact of a programme designed to improve pupils’ understanding of scientific concepts and reasoning, with the Let’s Think Forum.
  
• Examine the impact of one to one coaching on academic attainment of at risk 14-16 year-olds, through the Think Forward programme developed by the Private Equity Foundation.
  
• Work with the University of Oxford to test programmes designed to develop younger primary children’s understanding of mathematical reasoning and spelling rules.
  
• Work with the Greater London Authority to test the impact of behavioural support on pupils at risk of exclusion in 20 London schools.
  

For more information, please contact Robbie Coleman at the EEF (robbie.coleman@eefoundation.org.uk) on 020 7802 1679.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1.  The Education Endowment Foundation is a charity set up in 2011 by the Sutton Trust as lead foundation in partnership with Impetus Trust, with a Department for Education grant of £125m. It is dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. Since its launch the EEF has awarded £28.7 million to 56 projects working with over 300,000 pupils in over 1,800 schools across England.

2.  Chess in Schools and Communities is a charity which aims to improve children's educational outcomes and foster their social development by introducing them to the game of chess in schools and inner city communities. CSC aims to establish a chess club in every primary school in England and Wales and currently works with 200 schools, providing them with chess sets, chess coaches and teacher training.

3.  The full list of projects funded by EEF can be viewed at http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects.

Think Forward, developed by the Private Equity Foundation and delivered in partnership with Tomorrow’s People, provides highly trained coaches to work with 14 year olds as they progress through to their GCSEs and post-16 choices, supporting them to make a successful transition into adulthood. Schools identify the young people who are most at risk of dropping out of education and employment. Coaches then develop relationships with those individuals, providing targeted support with whatever they need. This could include developing young people’s numeracy, literacy and other life skills, or providing work experience with Private Equity Foundation’s partner organisations.

The aim of the initiative is that by providing a stable relationship with an individual dedicated to thinking about all aspects of their future, young people can be guided down a path towards further education or training, and ultimately future employment. The programme has been piloted in schools in East London over two years. The initial results look positive, but it has not yet been tested with a control group. The aim of this project is to gain further evidence of the impact of the approach and explore how it could be trialled at scale.

Sheffield Hallam University, working with Essex University, will independently evaluate the project.

The programme, Talk of the Town, was developed by The Communication Trust, a coalition of nearly 47 voluntary and community organisations with expertise in speech, language and communication. Talk of the Town offers a whole school approach to supporting speech, language and communication. It aims to facilitate early identification, encourage joined up working and improve outcomes for children with speech, language and communication needs (SLCN). It addresses the high level of poor language that exists, especially in areas of social deprivation.

The programme is an integrated approach to supporting children’s communication development. As spoken language skills are thought to be a prerequisite to developing literacy skills, supporting language development is an important step in improving children’s attainment. The programme supports universal workforce development so teachers so are able to accurately identify pupils with SLCN, which can be difficult in schools with high levels of poverty, as those with moderate but not severe issues can often be overlooked. The programme provides targeted training for teaching staff through part-time speech and language therapists, to deliver evidence-based interventions for raising attainment. It also supports leadership to embed a sustainable, long-term strategy to support all children’s communication needs.

The work grew out of a pilot in Wythenshawe, a deprived area of Manchester, funded by the Department for Education. This showed promising results but the evaluation was mostly qualitative. However, the underlying interventions supported as part of Talk of the Town are those that have been identified through the Better Communication Research Programme as having good evidence of impact (for more information, see What Works database).

The EEF is funding a randomised controlled trial of Talk of the Town. The Communication Trust will recruit 62 primary schools, 31 of which will be randomly allocated to participate in the full model for two years and the other half will receive training in just one of the interventions. The language and literacy skills of pupils in both groups of schools in both will be measured.

Queen’s University Belfast will undertake the independent evaluation.

Catch22 will support pupils with low attainment, prior records of truancy and exclusion, and special educational needs. It will seek to improve pupils’ attainment by reducing challenging behaviour through group work in communication skills, and one-to-one support from a keyworker. The one-to-one support is tailored to the needs of each young person, and can involve support with family issues, anger management sessions, or careers guidance, for example. As part of the intervention, both Catch22 workers and school teachers are trained to support pupils’ communication needs by the charity ICAN.

An initial pilot of the Engage in Education project in 2011, worked with around 1,000 pupils, and showed promising improvements in attendance and attainment, and reductions in exclusion. This project provides an opportunity to test this approach further, and explore what works in improving behaviour and attainment among a highly disadvantaged group of young people.

A research team at the University of Cambridge is planned to independently evaluate the impact of this approach. 

Today Dr Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, has welcomed Ben Goldacre’s report Building Evidence into Education.  The paper outlines how teachers in England have the chance to make teaching a truly evidence-based profession.  Speaking at the launch of the report at Bethnal Green Academy in Tower Hamlets, Kevan Collins said:

“Ben’s excellent report makes a hugely compelling case for improving the way that we use evidence in our schools.  Enquiry is at the heart of good teaching, and the report sets out a vision of an education system that embraces rigorous, collaborative enquiry at every level.  As Ben notes, creating such a system is a formidable challenge, but the rewards of doing so are great.  At the EEF we’re delighted to be part of the effort to promote evidence informed education in three ways.

• Through our funding we’re supporting over 50 randomised trials in English schools, working in over 1,400 schools and with 275,000 pupils.  The scale of this work is unprecedented, and together it represents a collective effort to increase the knowledge of what works best which will benefit every school in the country.
  
• Through the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, produced in collaboration with the Sutton Trust and Durham University, we are ensuring that teachers have access to existing knowledge which can inform the decisions they make.
  
• Finally, we’re supporting teachers who want to conduct small-scale trials through our DIY Evaluation Guide. The Guide introduces the key principles of educational evaluation and provides guidance on how to conduct a trial in an individual school or classroom.“

Building Evidence into Education can be viewed on the Department for Education website here.

More information about the EEF's projects can be found on our Projects page here.

The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit can be viewed here.

The DIY Evaluation Guide can be viewed here.

Press release: Monday 4th March 2013

SIR PETER LAMPL WELCOMES DESIGNATION OF SUTTON TRUST AND EEF AS ‘WHAT WORKS’ CENTRE

The Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation have been designated a What Works centre today, in recognition of their pioneering approach to independent evidence-based policy making.

Sir Peter Lampl, chairman of the Sutton Trust and of the Education Endowment Foundation, said today: “I’m delighted that our work has been recognised as an exemplar of What Works in evidence-based policy making. For over 15 years, the Sutton Trust has been using research to inform policy development, and since its launch the Education Endowment Foundation has begun some of the most rigorous trialling of education interventions yet seen in Britain.

“In the past teachers and policy-makers have often lacked a solid evidence base to support their decisions. I hope the new network will change that, and with our help, we will see more effective schools and improved outcomes for our young people as a result.”

What Works is a network of independent evidence-based organisations, which draws its approach partly from the work of the Sutton Trust and Education Endowment Foundation, and also from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence, to develop evidence-based policy making in central and local government and among practitioners.

Thousands of schools already use the Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit, an interactive summary of over 5,500 studies on the impact of a range of educational interventions including effective approaches to teaching, pupil feedback and behaviour.

For more information, please contact Ellie Decamp at the Sutton Trust (ellie.decamp@suttontrust.com) on 020 7802 1660 or Robbie Coleman at the EEF (robbie.coleman@eefoundation.org.uk) on 020 7802 1679.

NOTES TO EDITORS

1.  The Education Endowment Foundation is a charity set up in 2011 by the Sutton Trust as lead charity in partnership with Impetus Trust, with a Department for Education endowment of £125m. It is dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. Since its launch the EEF has awarded £24.4 million to 55 projects working with over 275,000 pupils in over 1,400 schools across England.

2.  The Sutton Trust is a foundation set up in 1997, dedicated to improving social mobility through education. It has published over 120 research studies and funded and evaluated programmes that have helped hundreds of thousands of young people of all ages, from early years through to Access to the Professions. 

3.  The Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit is an accessible summary of educational research which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. It currently covers 30 topics and is based on work by Durham University. To access the Toolkit please visit: http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/. 

The events - in Bristol (3rd December), Leeds (10th December) and London (26th November) - brought together teachers, researchers and others to investigate a simple but challenging question: How can we ensure that knowledge of what works to reduce educational disadvantage makes an impact on practice?

Evidence can help teachers identify ways of spending their time and money which are likely to lead to the biggest possible increases in pupil learning. However, it isn’t always accessible or easy to use. These events aimed to examine what teachers and researchers can do to narrow the gap between evidence and practice. They looked at case studies of evidence-based practice used to increase attainment, and provided an opportunity for teachers to tell the research community how it could be more useful to schools.

A short report on presenting the highlights and key messages from the events can be found here.

In addition, the events were supported by a discussion paper written by Professors Carol Campbell and Ben Levin of the University of Toronto. The paper can be found here.

EEF Chief Executive Kevan Collins wrote the following article for the NASUWT's Teaching Today magazine.

Making the most of the Pupil Premium

Teaching is not medicine, and comparisons between schools and hospitals often miss the point.  It will never be possible to prescribe the perfect lesson plan or construct a formula for feedback which works for every child.  But teachers, like doctors, are professionals and deserve to be provided with the highest quality information to support the difficult decisions they must make every day. 

I believe that educational research can help inform decision-making by clearly showing the experiences of others who have made similar decisions in the past.  Off the shelf solutions don’t exist in education, but it is useful to know what ideas – new and old – others have tried, and how they have fared.  On average, have teachers found it easier to increase learning by focusing on improving the quality of feedback or by setting more homework?  How have other schools sought to increase levels of parental involvement, or ensure that their teachers and teaching assistants work together effectively?

One particular decision receiving attention at the moment is how to spend the Pupil Premium.  In 2013-14 the Premium will be worth £900 per eligible school.  The average school will receive just under £85,000, and in the following year this is likely to rise well above £100,000.

To help teachers will all of the decisions they face, including the allocation of the Pupil Premium, the charity I work for – the Education Endowment Foundation – have published a free and accessible resource summarising educational research.  The Teaching and Learning Toolkit, initially produced by Durham University for the Sutton Trust, has been developed by the EEF since our launch in 2011.  It was updated and expanded last month, and now contains summaries of 29 topics, including behaviour, aspiration, peer tutoring and collaborative learning, as well as case studies and advice on how to embed these strategies in classrooms.

Dr Kevan Collins is chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation.

The original article can be found at: http://www.nasuwt.org.uk/MemberSupport/NASUWTPublications/AllPublications/NASUWTMagazines/index.htm.

Comprehension

There has been a good deal of sound academic research on the impact of methods to improve reading comprehension. A great deal is understood about the principles of effective reading comprehension instruction. What is needed now is rigorous investigation of programmes that help teachers put these principles into practice.

The EEF is funding four projects focusing on comprehension to improve literacy. Collectively these will involve up to 122 schools and will reach some 2,530 pupils. The projects are:

• £525,000 to University College London to compare the effectiveness of a phonics-focused intervention with one that integrates phonics and comprehension strategies. The project will be run as a randomised control trial and delivered individually or in small groups, with sessions run by trained teaching assistants and will reach 20 schools in Yorkshire and Humber. 
• £397,315 to Coventry University to trial the Reading Agency’s Chatterbooks programme, along with a dialogic approach to teaching reading comprehension. The project will be run as a randomised control trial with three groups: one that participates in the basic Chatterbooks programme, one that receives Chatterbooks plus some dialogic reading instruction, and one that will act as a waitlisted control group. The project will involve 25-30 schools in the West Midlands and reach 400 pupils. 
• £393,570 to Bolton Council to run a randomised control trial of the Vocabulary Enrichment Intervention, a programme designed to expand pupils’ vocabulary by cultivating their enthusiasm for language and equipping them with specific strategies for learning and recalling new terms. The project will involve 17 schools in Bolton and reach 400 pupils. 
• £78,755 to Adamsrill Primary School to run a randomised control trial to test the impact of the Rhythm for Reading programme developed by Dr Marion Long. This is a simple rhythm-based intervention designed to improve reading comprehension. The project will involve 5 schools in Lewisham and reach 200 pupils.

Decoding

Fluent decoding – the process of translating print into speech by rapidly matching a letter or combination of letters to its sound and recognizing the patterns that make syllables and words – is the foundation on which literacy is built. There is strong evidence from a wide range of high-quality studies that phonics approaches are very effective, particularly for disadvantaged children, and that they are a highly cost-effective intervention. Further research is required on phonics for older readers, addressing particularly the issues of how to target children accurately and how to ensure materials and instructional approaches are ‘age appropriate’.

The EEF is funding five projects focusing on decoding to improve literacy. Collectively these will involve up to 80 schools and will reach some 5,500 pupils. The projects are:

• £520,064 to North Tyneside Council to run a randomised control trial on the impact of paired reading approaches, with Year 9 pupils tutoring Year 7 pupils in English in structured sessions for 15 weeks. This will be the first trial of peer tutoring in UK secondary schools. The project will involve nine schools in North Tyneside and reach 3,600 pupils. 
• £457,980 to Real Action to conduct a randomised control trial of their Butterfly programme. This is a straightforward approach to teaching synthetic phonics, in which children are taught to decode words by sounding out letters and combinations of letters. It is distinctive in two respects: it will be delivered mainly by undergraduate students, and will use a heavily didactic approach – the children will interact mainly with the class tutor rather than with each other. This project will involve six schools in London and reach 400 pupils. 
• £390,206 to Dyslexia Action to run a randomised control trial of a computer-based phonics programme, Units of Sound, created as a ‘second chance’ phonics instruction intervention for older pupils. Pupils use the programme to learn and practise independently at a level that is appropriate for them. The approach is also being translated into resources for parents to use to support learning at home. This project will involve 50 schools (location to be confirmed) and reach 1,000 pupils. 
• £148,217 to Norfolk Council to conduct a randomised control trial of the ‘Rapid Phonics’ approach, built on the idea that, because phonics is a relatively dry subject, catch up lessons need to be ‘snappy’: quick, memorable, and fun.  It will aim to improve the literacy of struggling readers at the end of Year 6 and beginning of Year 7. This project will involve three schools in Norfolk and reach 150 pupils.
• £390,000 to run four trials of Fresh Start, a phonics programme for older children. The four trials are being led by Harlow Education Consortium, Withernsea High School, Ercall Wood Technology College and Bridgwater High School and all are working with at least one other school. Each trial is being run as a randomised controlled trial and the results will be aggregated.

Reading for Pleasure

Reading for pleasure interventions are designed to promote children’s enjoyment of books and encourage them to see reading as a pastime rather than a chore. There is some research evidence which suggests that reading for pleasure is important for both personal and academic development. Interventions in this area tend to be cheap and easy to administer, so even small effects may be enough to make the approach attractive.  

The EEF is funding three projects focusing on comprehension to improve literacy. Collectively these will involve up to 50 schools and will reach some 2,000 pupils. The projects are:  

• £218,414 to Book Trust to evaluate the impact of providing reading material and volunteer support to 900 children over the summer holidays. Children involved will receive a personalised package of children’s books and participate in events over the summer. 
• £480,953 to Unitas to test the impact of a volunteer-led one-to-one reading programme. The programme consists of daily 20 minute reading sessions delivered over 10-15 weeks, and students will participate in Liverpool, London, Oldham and Staffordshire.
• £147,000 for four secondary schools – Thornaby Academy, St. John’s C of E School, Broadgreen High School and Tideway School – to run randomised controlled trials of Accelerated Reader, a web-based programme that carefully matches books to pupils’ reading abilities, offers quizzes to check understanding and rewards engagement. The results from the four trials will be aggregated to understand the effect of Accelerated Reader across the four schools.

Writing

Improving writing is important in its own right, and has also been linked to improved reading comprehension. The average scores for writing in Key Stage 2 SATs are consistently lower than for reading and there is a noticeable gender gap throughout all Key Stages.

The EEF is funding three projects that focus on improving writing, all of which will be tested through randomised controlled trials. Collectively these will involve up to 74 schools and will reach some 2,380 pupils. They are:

• £395,850 to the Calderdale Excellence Partnership to provide memorable experiences to students in four schools in Yorkshire. The experiences will be used as the starting point for improving writing and approaches used to teach about the writing process will adopt many of the features of a well-tested intervention – Self-Regulated Strategy Development instruction. 
• £240,652 to Discover Children’s Story Centre to run a four week summer programme between Year 6 and Year 7. The programme will include a variety of workshops including poetry sessions, functional literacy sessions, reading sessions, and trips to performances, festivals, and libraries. 
• £338,752 to the University of Exeter in partnership with the National Association of Teachers of English. The programme, which builds on the ESRC Grammar for Writing project, seeks to improve children’s writing by showing them how to manipulate grammar and syntax to achieve different effects on the reader.

Mixed approaches

Mixed approaches combine two or more of the strategies above. The EEF is funding eight projects in this category. Collectively these will involve up to 80 schools and will reach some 5,300 pupils. The projects are:

• £70,575 to Switch On to test the impact of a literacy programme for underperforming Key Stage 3 pupils. The programme incorporates – in a simplified form – elements of other reading programmes; the proposed trial will involve 15 secondary schools in Nottinghamshire. 
• £429,553 to Catch Up Literacy to test the impact of a structured literacy intervention delivered by teaching assistants in 15 local authorities across England. The programme provides two 15 minute teaching sessions to each child per week and adopts a combination of segmenting, blending phonemes and memorising letter names of high frequency sight words. 
• £550,347 to CUREE and Achievement for All to trial Response to Intervention, a system for identifying under-performing pupils and providing evidence-based interventions. The programme, developed in the US, has some promising evidence supporting its impact, but has not been rigorously evaluated in England. 
• £455,800 to Shine Trust to test the impact of a summer school programme providing additional lessons for 480 pupils in London and Manchester. The programme will have an emphasis on literacy tuition, but also include enrichment activities to engage and motivate pupils. 
• £726,112 to Success for All to test a computer-assisted learning programme and an approach to teaching English in Year 7 which focuses on collaborative learning and individualised teaching. The programme will involve 1740 pupils across 35 schools in Yorkshire and the Humber.
• £306,000 to Perry Beeches Academy to test the impact of one to one academic coaching on literacy outcomes. Graduate coaches provide intensive tuition to pupils in key subjects. 480 students will receive some form of tuition across four secondary schools and two academic years.
• £148,000 to Greenford High School to develop and pilot a programme to improve pupils’ speaking and listening skills. The programme will aim to improve the quality of classroom talk and also train teaching assistants to deliver targeted interventions. The project will work with 240 students across three schools.

This follows the announcement of 19 literacy catch-up projects in November which focussed on a variety of aspects of literacy, including comprehension, decoding, writing and reading for pleasure.

The four new projects, each being led by individual schools or consortia of schools, are:

• £306,000 to Perry Beeches Academy to test the impact of one to one academic coaching on literacy outcomes. Graduate coaches provide intensive tuition to pupils in key subjects.
• £148,000 to Greenford High School to develop and pilot a programme to improve pupils’ speaking and listening skills. The programme will aim to improve the quality of classroom talk and also train teaching assistants to deliver targeted interventions.
• £390,000 to run four trials of Fresh Start, a phonics programme for older children. The four trials are being led by Harlow Education Consortium, Withernsea High School, Ercall Wood Technology College and Bridgwater High School.
• £147,000 for four secondary schools – Thornaby Academy, St. John’s C of E School, Broadgreen High School and Tideway School – to run randomised controlled trials of Accelerated Reader, a web-based programme that carefully matches books to pupils’ reading abilities, offers quizzes to check understanding and rewards engagement.

These four projects demonstrate an interesting new model for EEF funding, with schools running their own randomised controlled trials and results being aggregated across several trials to increase their significance and applicability.

Sir Peter Lampl wrote the following article for the Sunday Times.

We don't need no grandiose education

Thursday’s school league tables revealed that in a quarter of English sixth forms and colleges not a single student achieved the A-level grades needed to go to one of our leading universities. Our research at the Sutton Trust shows there are five independent schools that get more places at Oxbridge than 2,000 state schools and colleges combined.

While the gap in GCSE results between pupils from the poorest homes — those entitled to free school meals — and other schoolchildren narrowed a little, the difference is still vast. Among white working-class boys, only 26% gain five good GCSEs, compared with a national average of 59%.

The government’s answer has been to create more academies — state-funded schools that are independent of local authorities. The best academies get excellent results and have improved more quickly than other schools. But too many academies were below the government’s minimum standard in last week’s tables. Rather than structures, the real focus needs to be on standards and more specifically on practical approaches to improving teaching. The quality of teaching is the single biggest factor that affects results in schools.

Research by the London School of Economics for the trust shows that English schools could move into the world’s top five education performers within a decade if the performance of the least effective 10% of teachers were brought up to the average.

Research at Harvard has shown that if you leave a low-value-added teacher in a school for 10 years, rather than replacing him or her with an average teacher, an average class of 28 pupils will lose a total of about $2.5m (£1.5m) in lifetime income.

Like many people from the business world, I used to have a negative view of teachers. The assumption is that they have an easy job with long holidays, early retirement and generous pensions. But after spending the past 15 years in education, chairing the trust and more recently the Education Endowment Foundation, my view has been transformed.

I now have nothing but admiration for teachers, particularly those in inner cities who are often working wonders against the odds. It should be nothing less than a national priority to find better ways of evaluating, developing and compensating them.

Too often, we are seduced by high-profile initiatives that distract us from what is really important in improving the standard of education. A lot of attention has been focused on those entering teaching and too little attention on improving the standards of the 440,000 teachers already in England’s classrooms.

Last week the trust and the Education Endowment Foundation launched an online guide for teachers that summarises the results of more than 5,000 pieces of research from around the world about what works in improving pupil achievement. Based on work by Durham University, it is constantly updated as additional research becomes available.

Some approaches popular with teachers appear far less effective than you might think. For example, there is very little proof that reducing class sizes by small amounts or employing extra teaching assistants — as currently deployed — improves learning. Yet both are practised extensively in schools.

By contrast, there are other approaches that are less expensive and deliver better results. The single most effective way to help children gain good results involves teachers giving their pupils better feedback. When teachers explain to pupils how they could improve their schoolwork and when pupils reveal to teachers what they know about a subject, such feedback is equivalent to the gain you would get by spending an extra eight months in the classroom, so long as teachers strike the right balance between encouragement and correction.

On the other hand, reducing class sizes has an average gain equivalent to three extra months, and has only really been shown to work well in classes with fewer than 17 pupils.

With schools having to manage their budgets more carefully, it is important for them to look at the approaches that will offer them good value for money as well as good results. The biggest gains come in getting teaching right. Yet it is surprising just how few schools look at the research before deciding how best to improve their results and prioritise the development of their most-prized assets: teachers.

That’s why the Education Endowment Foundation is running trials of different programmes in schools and using more than 10% of our £135m endowment from the government to evaluate them rigorously. Where programmes are proven to be cost-effective, we want to see them rolled out to many more schools.

Sir Peter Lampl is Chair of the Sutton Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation.

POOR MENTORING CAN BE WORSE THAN NO MENTORING, NEW TEACHERS’ TOOLKIT REVEALS

Poor mentoring can be worse than no mentoring for vulnerable young people. That’s one of the insights for teachers provided by the revamped Sutton Trust-Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit launched today.

The updated Toolkit, developed by a team of academics at Durham University led by Professor Steve Higgins, shows how schools can best use their resources to provide the biggest possible increases in pupils’ learning.

The interactive guide has been revamped and now summarises over 3,000 studies on the impact of a range of interventions including improved behaviour strategies, a school’s physical environment, collaborative learning and extending the school day.

Thousands of schools have already been introduced to the research-led approach as a way of using the £623 per pupil they receive for each disadvantaged youngster on their roll through the Pupil Premium. The Premium is set to rise to £900 next year, and is likely in to increase again in 2014-15.

On mentoring, the Toolkit collates research from both sides of the Atlantic to show the importance of having mentors whom young people can trust – perhaps successful people from a similar background – who have been given training and support.

The Toolkit says: “The impact of mentoring is variable, but on average it has tended to be low in terms of direct effect on academic outcomes. There is some evidence that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are likely to benefit more (nearly double the impact). Other positive benefits have been reported in terms of attitudes to school, attendance and behaviour.

“However, there are also risks associated with unsuccessful mentor pairings which may have a detrimental effect on the mentee, and the negative overall impacts seen in some studies should prompt caution.”

Programmes where mentors drop out soon after establishing contact with a young person can damage the student’s chances.

The new Toolkit adds to the list of approaches that research shows are effective at boosting attainment, while comparing their relative cost effectiveness. Each of the following can be worth the equivalent of four months’ learning time to a school:

• Improved behaviour strategies, particularly those targeted at individual young people who are persistently misbehaving
• Social and Emotional Aspects of Learning programmes, which focus on improving student behaviour and attitudes, and on the ethos of the school
• Small group tuition, which can be nearly as effective as individual tuition, but at a lower cost

The Toolkit also notes that there is little evidence that investment in school buildings or environment has a direct impact on results with one strong exception: better air quality can help improve learning. Schools that leave their windows closed end up re-circulating too much carbon dioxide, which has been shown has a detrimental effect on learning.

The new Toolkit has links for schools to providers of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) courses via the Teacher Development Trust’s GoodCPDGuide, an easier facility for downloading evidence and a new Pupil Premium calculator to help teachers plan the most effective use of those funds.

Sir Peter Lampl, Chair of the Education Endowment Foundation and of the Sutton Trust, said today: “Too often English education has been bedevilled by initiatives without evidence. The Toolkit helps teachers make the most of their resources to have the maximum impact on student results. It provides cautionary tales about the importance of getting programmes like mentoring right and positive suggestions on which strategies do most to boost attainment.”

Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, added: “Educational improvement is about applying the knowledge we have and committing to learning more. The new Toolkit helps teachers and school leaders by providing clear information about a wide variety of potential strategies to improve learning.  At a time when Ofsted and the Government are holding schools more accountable for the Pupil Premium, it will also help schools to ensure that they are making the most of their funding at a time of scarce public resources.”

Professor Steve Higgins, School of Education, Durham University, said: “Our research aims to help schools decide how to spend their money and time effectively to help disadvantaged pupils using the best evidence available. It show what has, and importantly what has not, been effective in the past so will support schools making more effective choices.”

For more information please contact Robbie Coleman on 020 7802 1679 or email robbie.coleman@eefoundation.org.uk.

Professor Steve Higgins Durham University is available for interview on 0191 334 8310 or email s.e.higgins@durham.ac.uk.  

NOTES TO EDITORS

1.  The Education Endowment Foundation is a charity set up in 2011 by the Sutton Trust as lead charity in partnership with Impetus Trust, with a Department for Education endowment of £125m. It is dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. Since its launch the EEF has awarded £24.4 million to 45 projects working with over 275,000 pupils in over 1,300 schools across England.

2.  The Sutton Trust is a foundation set up in 1997, dedicated to improving social mobility through education. It has published over 120 research studies and funded and evaluated hundreds of programmes for young people of all ages, from early years through to Access to the Professions. 

3.  Durham University’s School of Education is one of the leading departments for education in the UK.  Durham is ranked in the top 5 UK universities in the Sunday Times University Guide 2013 and is 26th in the world for the impact of its research (THE citations ratings).

4.  The Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit provides a guide for teachers to 30 different approaches to improving attainment in schools, with links to the evidence, case studies and training opportunities. It is based on work by Durham University. To access the Toolkit please visit: http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/.

5.  The most effective approaches to improving attainment identified by the Toolkit remain feedback, meta-cognition and self-regulation and peer tutoring. The Toolkit provides the average gains shown by the research for particular programmes, and these gains will vary in different schools and among different pupil cohorts.

Learning to Learn

No one would claim that the last two years have been a peaceful time for English schools. Academies, free schools, a new curriculum and examination system, and the introduction of the Pupil Premium; barely a month has gone by without the announcement of a new reform.

Here I want to push your patience with an account of one more change.
It is one that hasn’t received as much attention or as many column inches as those above, but which I believe is perhaps as signifi cant a development as any I have seen in the 30 years I have worked in the English education system. 

I am talking about the fact that more than ten per cent of secondary schools across the country are now involved in research projects that will allow them and others to take a more evidence-based approach to teaching.

This activity – funded by the charity I work for, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) – is just the start of a move that will increase the role of evidence and professional refl ection in our system with the potential to benefit every school in the country. Including our work at primary level, more
than 1,000 schools and more than 275,000 children and young people are now involved in projects that will rigorously test new pedagogical techniques, targeted interventions and strategies for engaging with parents and communities.

I believe that this work is quietly revolutionary for three reasons.

First, it demonstrates that school leaders are now looking for hard evidence to support their decision making. Rather than having to accept edicts from above, heads are seeking proof that ideas are effective. This trend is hugely encouraging.

Second, it will demonstrate the power that collaboration has to increase outcomes for all of our children. In order to rigorously evaluate a new programme, it is essential that schools work together. Without the participation of a number of schools, it is impossible to establish that any apparent benefits of the programme are attributable to the intervention and not to some other factor.

Third, through this collaboration, we are seeing the development of a new type of school-to-school support, which transcends geographical
boundaries. All of our projects share the common aim of raising the attainment of disadvantaged students. Together, the fi ndings will build a comprehensive bank of information and ideas for all.

The projects

We have funded 45 projects to date, and the range of information they will produce will be vast.

Twenty-fi ve schools in Manchester are trialling a new form of one-to-one tuition, provided by local university students and graduates and organised by a new charity, the Tutor Trust. If this is successful, it could provide a cost-effective option that can be scaled to other university cities from Exeter to Newcastle.

Thirty schools in Hertfordshire and the east of England are testing an approach that seeks to boost academic attainment by improving students’ resilience. The programme will be robustly evaluated, and if successful, could have wide implications for how schools support disadvantaged pupils.

Collectively, more than 250 secondaries are involved in projects testing out different approaches to supporting children who arrive in Year 7 without having achieved level 4 in English. These projects will provide a wealth of advice to secondary heads that have incoming students with low levels of literacy.

Maximising the effects of resources

Evidence is not just about testing new interventions. It is also about finding out how to make best use of the resources already available
to us. To take a much-publicised example, we are building on the finding that teaching assistants have, on average, no positive benefit on pupil attainment by funding projects that seek to identify specific strategies that will maximise their effects.

More broadly, we are seeking to support the decision-making of heads,
notably around the Pupil Premium, in order to ensure that schools have the best possible chance of maximising the effects of their spending.

We know that the relationship between increasing spending and increasing outcomes is not a straightforward one. Nationally, spending per pupil rose by 68 per cent in the last decade without any signifi cant
increase in the international league tables, and some early evidence on
the Pupil Premium also suggests that there is a cause for concern about its effects. But by providing heads with access to high-quality information, it will be possible to change this.

Our primary resource, which presents this information, is the Teaching and Learning Toolkit. The toolkit, initially produced by Durham University for the Sutton Trust, has been developed by the EEF since our launch in 2011 and will be updated this month. It contains summaries of educational research from the UK and overseas, as well as case studies and links to resources that can be used to embed effective strategies in schools. As our project evaluations emerge, these will also feed into the toolkit, making it a live, up-to-date summary of what we know in education.

I want to take this opportunity to thank the secondaries across the country that are already involved in projects. In the course of these projects, we have discovered that gaining true knowledge requires effort and patience. It means organising large groups of schools, staggering the implementation of projects, and measuring them closely. But I have no doubt that this shared endeavour will be worth it.

And for those of you not yet involved in projects, or who haven’t yet considered how evidence can support your school, I invite you to join the (quiet) revolution.

Dr Kevan Collins is chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation.

The original article can be found at: http://www.leadermagazine.co.uk/articles/learning_to_learn/.