This study is a ‘School Choices’ project that aims to test the impact of homework club provision in secondary schools on pupils’ attainment in maths and understand the extent to which homework club provision varies across schools.
School leaders make choices about school-wide practices and approaches that are intended to produce positive outcomes for pupils, such as how to organise the school day or communicate with families. However, many school-level practices have limited or no supporting research evidence, which means leaders must make decisions using other information. The aim of School Choices research is to produce causal evidence about the impact of different school-level approaches and policies on outcomes of interest, with particular attention to impact on pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
School Choices evaluations are divided into two phases: a scoping phase, and an impact evaluation phase. During the scoping phase, the research teams will refine their research questions, verify their assumptions, and explore the feasibility of their evaluation designs.
This project is co-funded by leading algorithmic trading company XTX Markets as part of our work to commission independent evaluations that aim to improve maths outcomes for 11 – 16-year-olds in secondary schools in England.
We know that homework completion and engagement are key predictors of academic attainment. However, pupils from lower socio-economic backgrounds often face greater distractions, technological barriers, and limited adult support, making homework completion more challenging (Homework | EEF). One way some schools address these challenges is through the provision of staffed homework clubs.
However, little research evidence exists about the nature and extent of homework club provision or its impact on pupil attainment. This project aims to address this evidence gap by understanding the extent to which homework club provision varies across secondary schools in England, exploring for example the duration and staffing arrangements of homework clubs. If the study progresses to the impact evaluation stage, it will also assess the impact of schools with homework club provision on Year 11 pupils’ maths attainment.
This project is currently at the scoping phase. The aim of the scoping phase is to assess the feasibility of designing an impact evaluation that can produce causal evidence about the impact of homework club provision which could then potentially improve outcomes for pupils and specifically pupils from socioeconomically disadvantaged backgrounds.
The scoping phase will aim to:
- Understand the nature and variation of homework club provision across secondary schools in England.
- Understand the mechanisms which support the theory that engaging with homework clubs leads to improved attainment.
- Test the feasibility of using trained-AI tools to accurately classify schools’ homework provision using innovative web-scraping methods.
- Testing assumptions about homework club provision and determining the number of schools with and without homework clubs.
- Check whether it is possible to carry out a full impact evaluation, or whether a different evaluation method would work better.
The scoping phase will be completed in spring 2026. Once the scoping phase is finalised, this webpage will be updated.