The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) today welcomed the announcement from the Deputy Prime Minister that the Government is to allocate up to £10 million to pilot projects that will help disadvantaged pupil premium pupils during the transition from primary to secondary school. The EEF will deploy the extra money for a dedicated round seeking proposals from schools and others to find out what works in raising attainment during this critical and often difficult educational transition for many children.
Sir Peter Lampl, Chairman of the EEF, said: We very much welcome the Deputy Prime Minister’s announcement that the Government is investing £10 million for the EEF to fund and rigorously evaluate projects to find out into what works in helping disadvantaged children make the difficult transition from primary to secondary school. We know that difficulty making this transition effectively is one of the key stumbling blocks to improving social mobility in this country.
Dr Kevan Collins, Chief Executive of the EEF, said: We applaud the focus on what we know is a key juncture in children’s lives – we want to find out what actually makes the difference in nurturing the literacy and life skills at the end of primary school that are so important for the springboard to success in secondary schooling and beyond.
Last month the EEF announced a £200,000 pilot project to introduce American style summer schools in the UK aiming to improve the numeracy and literacy of disadvantaged pupils to help their transition into secondary school. This dedicated round will allow schools to explore and expand many other approaches which will help pupil premium pupils navigate the transition. Earlier this year the EEF awarded £3.2 million to six projects that aim to improve the attainment of poor pupils, in its first full round of grants. The grants will involve 180,000 pupils in 340 primary and secondary schools across England.
More details of the EEF round on primary-secondary school transition projects will be announced on the Apply for Funding pages of our website in July 2012.
The EEF is a charity, established by the Sutton Trust as the lead charity in a partnership with Impetus Trust, with a DfE endowment of £125m to boost the attainment of disadvantaged children in some of the country’s most challenging schools.