The Boys Development Programme (BDP) is a 12-week targeted social and emotional learning programme delivered by Future Men across 12 1−2−1 sessions. BDP aims to develop the social and emotional capacity and skills of boys in Years 7 – 11 to improve their educational engagement outcomes (including reducing the likelihood of exclusion) and reduce their likelihood of engaging in offending behaviours. Across one school term, students work alongside a dedicated BDP coordinator to complete a structured curriculum of activities.
More information on BDP and Future Men can be found at: https://futuremen.org/what-we-do/schools.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and the Youth Endowment Fund (YEF) are partnering to commission a number of research projects to find out which approaches are most effective in enabling pupils at the highest risk of absenteeism and/or exclusion from school to attend, positively engage with, and remain in school/college, to improve their attainment and reduce the likelihood of them becoming involved in violence.
Future Men’s programmes have a track-record of delivering support to young boys from minoritized groups. The programme offers a fantastic opportunity to robustly evaluate a promising programme which supports a cohort of young people often over-represented in the justice system and to improve educational engagement and achievement outcomes.
Cordis Bright are conducting this evaluation. It is an efficacy randomised controlled trialAn RCT is used evaluate an educational programme by assigning settings to one of two groups: the intervention group, who receive the programme or the control group, who continue with business as usual. This ensures that any differences in outcomes can be confidently attributed to the programme, providing a robust estimate of the impact and contributing to the evidence for what works in improving educational outcomes., designed to answer the question: Do targeted, social-emotional learning programmes for boys at risk of disengagement, exclusion, and anti-social behaviour improve school engagement in the future in comparison to business as usual?
This evaluation, managed by the Youth Endowment Fund, has reported its findings.
The evaluation report indicates a small positive impact on students’ school engagement immediately after receiving the programme. Students who received the BDP showed slightly higher levels of school engagement compared to students in control groupAs part of a Randomised Controlled Trial (RCT), settings will be randomised into either the intervention or control group. Settings in the control group continue with their usual practices and help provide a comparison to measure the intervention’s impact. They are usually offered a monetary compensation as thanks for their contribution. schools.
An exploratory analysis measured impact 12 weeks after the programme completed. This showed a moderate positive impact on school engagement suggesting that improvements may have strengthened over time.
For more information about this study including a more detailed summary of impact results and their interpretation, trial security, and cost assessment, please visit the Youth Endowment Foundation evaluation report page.