In autumn 2019, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Kent County Council (KCC) formed a partnership and created a new joint fund worth £600,000 to support improvements in education across Kent. The goal of the EEFective Kent Project (EKP) was to bring evidence-based programmes to Kent to support school improvement and the attainment of all pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.
The project had three strands of activity:
1. Promising Projects. Schools were able to apply for 50% matched funding from EKP to implement a Promising Project, referring to an independently evaluated programme or intervention identified as having high potential to improve attainment.
2. Evidence-Based Training. This was a training offer delivered through the EEF Research Schools Network designed to meet the needs of Kent schools, aiming to give schools an evidence base around their priority area and tools to understand successful implementation of evidence-based interventions. Courses included ‘SEND and Leaning Behaviours’ and ‘Tackling Educational Disadvantage’.
3. Developing Research Champions. Through this strand, the project aimed to embed and sustain evidence-based practice and leadership at multiple levels within the Kent school system to ensure project legacy. It included developing a network of evidence champions and establishing a Kent Evidence Education (KEE) Hub.
The project was intended to run for three years from September 2019 until July 2022 but was extended to July 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The EEF funded the project to increase understanding of how best to support local areas in their efforts to reduce the attainment gap. In 2019, it announced newly created regional leads — based across England — who would work with schools in their region who were most in need of support to improve attainment.
The independent evaluation was undertaken by IES from July 2020 to December 2023. It was a mixed methods evaluation, using data from surveys and interviews with participants including staff from KCC, the EEF and other key stakeholders. It aimed to develop a descriptive account of activities and reflections on lessons learned to inform future projects and policy. This included investigating whether the project had influenced demand for evidence-based programmes and whether training and support influenced schools’ capability to implement evidence-based interventions.
The evaluation faced several challenges that limit confidence in and the generalisability of findings. These included poor response rates to surveys, difficulties recruiting case studies and the withdrawal of the post-project evaluation phase, meaning the evaluation could not adequately assess sustained changes in practice within schools or the Kent school system.
Despite the difficulties with the evaluation, the findings suggest that:
- Match funding may be a useful lever for increasing schools’ take up of evidence-based programmes.
- Teachers and school leaders were attracted to evidence based training offers with a high degree of specificity to their context and valued opportunities to develop professional networks with similar schools.
- Staff capacity and stakeholder management were barriers to effective delivery of the EEFective Kent Project.