• EEF predicts 'little or no headway' in closing attainment gap by 2021

    Schools are expected to make “little or no headway” in closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their better-off classmates over the next few years, the Education Endowment Fund has warned. Based on last year’s key stage 2 results, the charity predicts that the gap between the Attainment 8 scores of the poorest pupils…

    0.01 Jan. 24th, 2018 | News

  • EEF: Teacher research engagement strategies are ineffective

    Teachers need “structured and intensive support” to engage with new research if outcomes are to improve, according to new findings from the Education Endowment Foundation. Three randomised controlled trials, funded and published by the EEF, found that passive methods currently used to educate teachers about research are not leading to changes in classroom practice or…

    0.02 Dec. 1st, 2017 | News

  • Mixed-ability classes barely exist in schools, researchers find

    Teaching pupils in mixed-ability groups is so unpopular that researchers struggled to find enough examples to complete a recent study into the practice. They found that factors driving schools to avoid such classes included the “fear that parents may respond negatively and results will be endangered”, according to a new paper from the British Educational…

    0.01 Sep. 5th, 2017 | News

  • Scaled-up literacy scheme fails to produce positive results

    A scaled-up scheme to train teaching assistants to deliver literacy interventions to struggling pupils has not produced the positive results of an earlier pilot. Switch-on, a 10-week programme which saw TAs trained to deliver intensive reading interventions, had a “promising” initial trial in 2014, achieving an extra three months of progress to year 7 pupils.…

    5.00 May. 30th, 2017 | News

  • 12-minute lessons best for pupil memories, study finds

    Pupils who are taught in 12-minute lessons that are repeated 24 hours later remember material much better, new research suggests. A trial of “spaced learning” showed pupils seemed to benefit from a short physics lesson, followed by a 10-minute break of another activity, then a short chemistry lesson, then another break, then a final, short,…

    0.01 Mar. 31st, 2017 | News

  • Pupils who record own learning make four months' progress in maths - and two other EEF trials

    A programme that develops pupils’ ability to reflect on their own learning has returned promising results for attainment in maths – but had negative impacts on reading, according to researchers. Evaluators at the University of Manchester found that 10-year-olds who took part in the ReflectED programme, in which they took photographs, made notes and kept…

    9.47 Nov. 4th, 2016 | News