Today, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published independent evaluations of three educational programmes, bringing the total number of complete EEF-funded projects to date to 155.
Eedi (Diagnostic questions)
Eedi is a mathematics homework setting platform, designed to help teachers identify their pupils’ misconceptions using diagnostic questions. Regular use of Eedi provides students with formative feedback with the aim of improving student attainment in mathematics at GCSE.
The efficacy trial of Eedi, evaluated by Alpha Plus and Manchester Metropolitan University, started in December 2017 and ended in June 2021, during which time 28,930 students in 158 schools took part. The efficacy trial combined an impact evaluation and an implementation and process evaluation.
This project was affected by the 2020 partial school closures caused by the Covid-19 pandemic, and the cancellation of GCSE examinations in 2020. As a result, the evaluators were not able to use GCSEs in order to estimate the impact of the project on maths attainment.
However, there was some evidence that Eedi reduced teachers’ homework-related workload. Practitioners responding to a survey conducted in intervention schools noted a decrease in their workload of, on average, 28 minutes per week, compared to teachers responding in control schools.
The full evaluation report, together with the EEF’s commentary on the findings, is available here.
Leadership Lite
Leadership Lite is a leadership development and school improvement intervention, which focuses on Continuing Professional Development (CPD) and increasing teacher satisfaction to improve both teacher retention and student attainment.
The programme includes direct face-to-face training, gap tasks in between sessions, network meetings and additional in-school support as required.
It had been planned that the trial of Leadership Lite, co-funded with the Wellcome Trust, would involve 140 secondary schools across two successive cohorts and the evaluation was scheduled to run from September 2018 to March 2025.
However, due to Covid-related disruption to programme delivery and the inability to collect reliable secondary attainment data, the trial was cancelled.
This report presents findings based on the implementation and process evaluation (IPE) data collected between March 2019 and March 2020.
The full evaluation report, together with the EEF’s commentary on the findings, is available here.
REACH Primary
REAding with CompreHension Primary (REACH Primary) is a targeted intervention for struggling readers in Year 3 (aged 7 – 8).
One-to-one sessions are delivered by teaching assistants to improve these pupils’ fluency, accuracy and reading comprehension abilities.
The efficacy trial involved 780 pupils from 79 schools, however delivery in some settings was disrupted by the pandemic and partial school closures in March 2020. As a result, the findings have a very low security rating.
The full evaluation report, together with the EEF’s commentary on the findings, is available here.