Education Endowment Foundation:How we work

How we work

Find out more about what we do, and why we do it.

We believe that how well you do at school shouldn’t be determined by your family’s income. That’s why we work to transform education outcomes for the children and young people who need it most. 

By the time a child born into a low-income family starts school, they are already less likely to meet expected levels of language, communication, and physical development. These attainment gaps then widen throughout primary and secondary school. 

These damaging gaps influence vital education and employment outcomes later in life. 

This doesn’t need to be the case. Giving every child – whatever their socio-economic background or where they go to school – access to great teaching is one of the most powerful levers we have to change this.

We believe the best way to improve teaching and learning is to make sure that the education sector has trustworthy and actionable information about how to boost outcomes. This is why we’re evidence obsessives. 

  • We summarise it. We look at the whole global evidence base to find out what we already know and present it in an actionable way. 
  • We build it. We fund the development, evaluation, and scale-up of programmes and approaches that aim to raise the attainment of children and young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
  • We put it to use. We help the education sector to use evidence in ways that really make a difference.