From developing new methods to investigating under-researched areas like early years and 16 – 19 education, we’ll share what we’re learning – and how we’re learning it. We’ll also highlight resources like the EEF Archive, new evaluation guidance, and our measures databases to keep researchers and practitioners in the loop.
Celeste Cheung, Methodological Innovation Lead, kicks off the series by exploring how the EEF’s evaluation work is evolving.
Why evaluation still excites me
After six years at the EEF, each day still brings something new. I put that down to two things: First, education is inherently complex with an ever-shifting social and political landscape. Second, evaluation methodologies might not sound thrilling to everyone, but the real excitement lies in their power to shape behaviour and decisions.
As an organisation, we’re always reviewing and fine-tuning our strategic priorities to ensure the evidence we generate is relevant and useful for school leaders and practitioners – the people at the heart of improving outcomes for socio-economically disadvantaged pupils. This guiding principle shapes what we prioritise to evaluate, and the methodological decisions we make along the way. Ultimately, the evidence that we generate needs to reach the right people and be used effectively to make a real change.
More strategic, more sector-focused
Our evaluation team is primarily focused on ensuring the quality and accuracy of the evidence we generate. But our role goes beyond evaluation design and analysis – we also support colleagues across the organisation in deciding what to fund and how that work is shared with the sector. Over the past three years, the EEF has taken a more strategic and focused approach to our commissioning. We’ve been prioritising evidence generation in areas with significant gaps or where insight is urgently needed.
A good example of this is our recent and rapid expansion into the early years and 16 – 19 sectors. These are areas where there is still very limited evidence on what practices improve outcomes for children and learners. We’ve grown our internal expertise to focus more deeply on these sectors, and we’ve been consolidating learnings from the trials we’ve run and sharing lessons that we’ve picked up along the way (see reports on Early Years and 16 – 19). There have been challenges, such as patchy data and unpredictable recruitment, which has meant working closer than ever with our evaluators to adapt processes and overcome these barriers.
A central aim of our research strategy is to ensure the evidence we generate can have a real and direct impact on everyday teaching and learning. That’s why we’ve been – and will continue – expanding our School/Setting Choices and Teacher Choices commissioning, while also increasing our focus on evaluating policy initiatives.
These newer streams of work mean we’re diversifying our evaluation ‘toolbox’, which typically relies on school-level Randomised Controlled Trials (RCTs), to embrace a broader range of designs. This includes quasi-experimental designs (QEDs) and variations of RCTs, such as cross-over design, randomisation at class- and teacher- level, and teacher-led micro-RCTs.
Facing new methodological challenges
As our strategic priorities evolve, with a sharper focus on generating evidence that directly impacts teaching and learning, we’re also facing a new set of methodological challenges such as selecting appropriate outcomes and establishing valid comparison groups.
So, what are we doing to help address them?
1. Unlocking the EEF archive
Over the years we’ve accumulated a wealth of data from over 120 trials, which is held in the EEF archive. It offers enormous potential to help answer pressing methodological questions, from improving evaluation design to refining analytical strategies. This supports our commitment to open science, enabling access for secondary analysis.
We’re now in the final stages of developing the processes that will allow wider access to this archive for the research community. We’re excited about the possibilities this will unlock — both for us and for others in the sector.
You can view contents of the archive in our Data Catalogue.
2. Creating space for knowledge exchange and reflection
Our work in the early years has shown us the power of collaboration. The sheer complexity in navigating methodological challenges in this space — from project recruitment to study design and analysis — has made it clear just how valuable a community of practice can be.
We’ve learned a great deal from researchers and practitioners and our Choices Study Advisory Boards. We’re keen to foster more opportunities for open dialogue and reflection to strengthen our guidance and refine our approach to commissioning evaluations that require greater adaptability and innovation.
This kind of collective problem-solving will be just as important as we expand our work in 16 – 19 education, School and Teacher Choices, and policy evaluations.
3. Looking from others
We’re making a conscious effort to look outward — to learn from others and explore new methodological approaches from across disciplines. Our annual Evaluator Conference is one important forum for sharing innovations and gathering feedback from our panel of evaluators, and this new methods blog series.
By sharing what we’re learning and staying open to new insights from others, we can keep improving the way we generate and apply evidence. So, stay tuned for upcoming blogs in the new school year, covering topics like measuring socio-economic disadvantage in the 16 – 19 sector, the latest updates on the EEF data archive, and some deep-dive discussions on choosing the right level of randomisation in education trials.