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Report highlights key factors to consider for Research Schools Programme in Opportunity Areas

6 October 2021

A team led by UCL Institute of Education (IOE) have completed an independent evaluation of the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) Research Schools Programme in Opportunity Areas.

A closeup of a person in a suit holding papers at a desk sitting opposite a person out of focus in a white sweater. (Photo by Phil Meech for UCL Institute of Education)

The primary purpose of Research Schools is to act as a ‘bridge’ between the EEF’s evidence to support translating and applying evidence into practice. They do this through providing training and school-to-school support. The Research Schools in Opportunity Areas have a specific regional focus on improving the quality of teaching and learning in their areas, as part of a plan to improve social mobility.

Led by the Professor Qing Gu, Director of the UCL Centre for Educational Leadership, the evaluation investigated the impact of Research Schools in promoting better outcomes in schools. The researchers examined the barriers Research Schools faced in engaging other schools in their local areas with evidence-based practices. They also looked at how Research Schools embedded evidence-based practices and cultures in their own school and what impact their work had on their schools and local areas.

The three-year longitudinal evaluation looked at a mix of qualitative and quantitative evidence and found that school leadership was crucial in influencing the take-up of Research Schools’ activity on change in practice. However, the ways that school leaders worked to transform the culture and practice about teaching and learning across different schools varied considerably.

The researchers found that scaling up ‘prescribed’ change in practice is unlikely to be successful and that local knowledge, relationships and skills have to be respected in top-down initiatives for improvement across local school systems. For system-wide improvement campaigns, a key challenge is to provide sufficiently bespoke support to vulnerable schools that might lack the capacity and experience to implement promising interventions in ways that impact on learning.

At school level, the condition of each organisation shapes the professional, material and social base for change to take root. Therefore, any attempt at external change that aims to transform teachers’ practice but fails to consider the internal conditions, capacity and capabilities of an individual school is likely to be short-lived, the researchers concluded.

The research team also found that social resources are significant in place-based models for change like the Research Schools Programme in Opportunity Areas. They note that any effort to reshape and reorganise structural and systemic conditions for improvements are of little value unless they seek to build on the relational resources in the areas of interest and use them as social foundations for deep engagement and change over time.

Professor Qing Gu said: “We have learned that school leadership comes first among the structural, cultural, and organisational conditions that influence the take-up and impact of the Research School activity on change in practice. If the Research Schools are expected to continue to act as a change agent in the place-based model for improvement, the success of the model relies upon a sustained, systemic recognition of the centrality of leadership. Otherwise, the Matthew Effect that we have identified in evaluations on scaling-up campaigns (i.e., making good schools get better) may continue to manifest itself and adds to concerns about systemic and structural inequality in educational improvement."

In 2020, the research team published a report which provided insights into the initial three years of the Research Schools Network.

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Phil Meech for UCL Institute of Education