In Lizzie Swaffield and Jo Goodman’s previous two blogs in this series, we explored the ways that we and the Research Schools Network communicate, exemplify and work through partnerships to help schools and settings use evidence to improve outcomes.
In this blog, we’ll look more closely at an exciting new area of our work, Working Through Others.
Why collaborate?
Throughout our history, we’ve always looked to work with, and learn from, different types of organisations in the system, including local authorities, multi-academy trusts, charities, and training providers. They do vital work with schools across the country, and share our mission to break the link between family income and educational achievement.
Much of our work, from developing resources like the Teaching and Learning Toolkit, to our support for Early Career Framework and National Professional Qualification providers, has been the result of fruitful collaborations with others.
What is Working Through Others?
Working Through Others is a new pillar of our impact work, which marks a shift towards a more equitable, deliberate, and coherent approach to working with and for organisations in the system.
Building on what we’ve already learned, our work and ‘offer’ will be split into two parts:
1. Universal: content that’s been designed to help organisations in their support for educators and settings. We’ve launched a new resource hub on our website to house these resources.
2. Bespoke support: project work with specific organisations who are seeking to build their organisational capacity and expertise for evidence-use.
Three principles for Working Through Others
Recognising that leaders, teachers, and practitioners engage with evidence through a range of organisations, we’ve set out three principles for how we can support even more effective evidence use via:
An equitable application process that’s open to any organisation working with the profession and who shares our mission to tackle education inequality through evidence-use.
Genuine co-construction that’s focused on building organisational capacity and expertise for using evidence in processes, practices and outputs.
Monitoring and evaluation so that we can learn, iterate and improve together.
Where are we with the work?
In May, we received 78 applications for the bespoke support part of the work. This is really encouraging and highlights the appetite there is from organisations to work collaboratively to support schools and one another. From these applications, we’re testing out this new approach with four organisations:
Tees Valley Education Trust
Multi-academy trust based in the North West of England
A project looking at how leaders can develop and implement a package of support for staff across a trust to increase engagement with evidence and further develop teaching and learning, particularly in relation to tackling educational inequality.
Birmingham local authority SEN team
Special Educational Needs Team working across all of Birmingham
A project to build EEF evidence into the Team’s support for schools, helping leaders develop their strategic approach to inclusive high-quality classroom teaching
SSAT – Schools, Students and Teachers – Membership network and professional development provider for Primary, Special and Secondary Education
A project looking to co-construct resources for SSATs upcoming programme offer on Effective Implementation in schools. The programme will draw on the SSAT’s expertise around effective PD design (see Embedding Formative Assessment) in combination with EEF’s Implementation Guidance Report
The Ogden Trust – Science Education Charity and Professional Development provider
A project looking at the design of Professional Development ProgrammesA programme is a package of support, including professional development, that helps early years educators to improve particular areas of practice and children’s outcomes. that support improved physics teaching, with a view to improving teaching and learning for those facing barriers in physics.
What do we want to learn?
We aim to learn about the fit, feasibility and acceptability of this approach to providing support for organisations.
Crucially, we’ll work with all of the organisations to look at sharing resources and outputs in a way that benefits similar organisations who share our mission to use evidence to tackle education inequality.
To keep up to date with news on this and other EEF work, subscribe to our newsletter.
If you have further questions about this area of EEF’s work, please contact Lorwyn Randall – National Delivery Manager (System Support).