Making It REAL – trial

This project did not go ahead. 

The Making it REAL programme is a professional development programmeA 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 trains early years practitioners to deliver home visits and literacy events to disadvantaged families. The Making it REAL programme is targeted at three- and four-years olds in the academic year before starting reception, with a potential need for additional support in early literacy. It aims to improve children’s early literacy development.

Practitioners will deliver four home visits with the selected families. During the home visits, practitioners introduce families to the four strands of literacy – Oral Language and Rhyme, Environmental Print, Early Mark Making, and Books.

Practitioners will provide linked activities which they will leave with the parent, and which will help the parent support their child to develop within the strand of literacy.

Practitioners will also deliver four literacy events that will be open to all parents of 3 and 4‑year-olds in their setting. During these events, practitioners will have a further opportunity to introduce parents to the four strands of literacy, offering a range of activities that may not have taken place (or may not be able to take place) through the home visits. Literacy events can be held in the nursery setting but could also take place at a local venue such as a library, a park or a museum.

The Making it REAL programme includes a two-day training course for practitioners on how to share the Making it REAL approaches and activities with families. Practitioners will then identify the families from their setting they believe will most benefit from the programme. Practitioners will visit those families in the home as well as delivering literacy events for all the parents in the setting. Throughout the school year, practitioners will also attend five network meetings with NCB to support their delivery of Making it REAL.

As part of the Department for Education’s Accelerator Fund, the EEF is commissioning a number of trials of programmes that show promise for increasing pupil attainment.

Making it REAL was evaluated through a small RCTAn 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. as part of the Sutton Trust’s Parental Engagement Fund in 2017. It demonstrated that the project is feasible, and showed a significant improvement in the Home Learning Environment Index.

The REAL (Raising Early Achievement in Literacy) Programme was run as an efficacy trial from January 2019 to June 2021. The trial was Covid-affected preventing planned collection of impact data, however a full Implementation and Process EvaluationAn IPE is used to understand how and why an intervention has (or has not) been successful. Data is analysed to explore programme quality, reach, adaptation and differentiation, as well as setting fidelity and responsiveness to the trial design. was undertaken. The IPE found that key benefits of the intervention as perceived by practitioners were their improved knowledge of early literacy development, improved knowledge of how to work with families, greater understanding of children’s home environments, and increased confidence in supporting parents.