The programme, developed by the Centre for Applied Education Research (CAER), provides young children with eye tests and shares results with their family and their Early Years Setting, where staff receive training to support with the process of getting and using glasses.
682 children from 99 settings in the Bradford area participated in the trial, which ran from December 2019 until 2021, a year longer than originally planned due to Covid-related disruption. The evaluation was conducted by a team at the University of Nottingham.
In general, children who received the Glasses for Classes intervention made no additional progress in reading compared to those in control schools.
However, the report suggests that socio-economically deprived children in delivery settings made an extra month’s progress in reading, although these children did not show any additional improvement in their eyesight in comparison to children in control schools. It should be noted that there is high statistical uncertainty around this finding.
Read the full report here.
We’ve also published reports from four other evaluations today:
Parent and Children Together (PACT): This programme aims to increase the frequency and quality of parent/carers’ interactions with their children through specific activities. 450 children from 47 school-based nurseries took part in this evaluation, conducted by Durham University. The findings indicate that whilst the intervention did not boost progress, it may have had a small positive impact on the home learning environment.
Read the full report here.
Lexia (Revised): This intervention is a computer-based programme that aims to improve reading skills through personalised online learning activities, real-time reporting of student progress and paper-based resources. In the previous version of this report, the impact of the Lexia programme was calculated in a way that did not align with the original statistical analysis plan (SAP). The findings in this updated version still indicate that Lexia has a positive effect on learning, it translates to an average one months’ progress for pupils receiving the intervention (rather than two months as originally estimated).
Read the full report here.
ReflectED: This programme focuses on developing Key Stage 2 pupils’ (7 – 11-year-olds) metacognitive skills, with the view to boosting their attainment. Our trial shows that children who received the ReflectED approach made, on average, the equivalent of one month’s less progress in maths than those who didn’t. For further information, a blog exploring the findings is available here.
Read the full report here.