Getting more bang for your buck – the education interventions that really work

1. Getting more bang for your buck – the education interventions that really work Robert Coe Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring, Durham University Schools North East Summit, 14 Oct 2011

2. Toolkit of Strategies to ImproveLearning • Why we wrote it • Best buys • Worst buys • Learning • How might we use this? www.suttontrust.com

3. The pupil premium • Aims: • to reduce the attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving pupils nationally • to increase social mobility • to enable more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to the top Universities • to provide additional resource to schools to do this • Estimates of £430/ pupil on fsm in 2011-12; rising to £1750 in 2014-15?

4. The question How should a school spend any ‘discretionary’ budget to achieve maximum benefits in learning?

5. Before we started • Advice to schools: Up to you to decide… • Initial suggestions: • Smaller classes • One to one tuition • Does spending improve attainment? • Mixed & complex findings from research • The BananaramaPrinciple: It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it… • Do we know some things that do work? • Why have we failed to increase attainment over 30 years?

6. What we tried to do • Summarise the evidence from meta-analysis about the impact of different strategies on learning (attainment). • As found in research studies • These are averages • Apply quality criteria to evaluations: rigorous designs only • Estimate the size of the effect • Standardised Mean Difference = ‘Months of gain’ • Estimate the costs of adopting • Information not always available

7. In the Toolkit

8. Summaries • What is it?How effective is it?How secure is the • evidence?What are the costs?How applicable is it?Further information

9. Overview of value for money Promising May be worth it 10 Feedback Meta-cognitive Pre-school Peer tutoring 1-1 tutoring Homework Effect Size (months gain) Summer schools ICT Smaller classes Parental involvement AfL Notworth it Individualised learning Sports Learning styles After school Arts Teaching assistants Performance pay 0 Ability grouping £0 £1000 Cost per pupil

10. Key messages • Some things that are popular or widely thought to be effective are probably not worth doing • Ability grouping (setting); After-school clubs; Teaching assistants; Smaller classes; Performance pay • Some things look ‘promising’ • Effective feedback; Meta-­cognitive and self regulation strategies; Peer tutoring/peer‐assisted learning strategies; Homework

11. Focus on learning • Does your ‘theory of learning’ explain why • ability grouping (setting) • after-school clubs • teaching assistants • smaller classes • performance pay do not work (or are not cost effective)?

12. Do we care about learning? • Which of the following are evidence of learning? • Students are busy: lots of work is done • Students are engaged, interested, motivated • Classroom is ordered, calm, under control • What do school students value most? • Social interactions & status with peers • Keeping out of trouble • Pleasing teachers: good marks, neat writing, polite • Thinking hard about really challenging problems

13. Questions about learning • Learning is invisible. • How can you know what your students are learning? • What tools do you use to make learning visible? • What kind of tools do you need? • How often do students need to think hard? • Do teachers in your school really prioritise learning? Do students?

14. Feedback “… we have each been asked several times by teachers, ‘What makes for good feedback?’—a question to which, at first, we had no good answer. Over the course of two or three years, we have evolved a simple answer—good feedback causes thinking.” (Black & Wiliam, 2003)

15. If you want your students to learn something difficult … • You need to know how many of them have ‘got it’ • They need to know whether they have ‘got it’ • If they haven’t, you need to be able to do something about it

16. Meta-­cognitive and self regulation strategies • Teaching approaches which make learners’ thinking about learning more explicit in the classroom. • Eg teaching pupils strategies to plan, monitor and evaluate their own learning. • It is usually more effective in small groups so learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion. • Self-regulation refers to managing one’s own motivation towards learning as well as the more cognitive aspects of thinking and reasoning.

17. Peer tutoring/ peer-assisted learning strategies • Learners work in pairs or small groups to provide each other with explicit teaching support. The learners take on responsibility for aspects of teaching and for evaluating the success of their peers. • Cross-Age Tutoring an older learner usually takes the tutoring role and is paired with a younger tutee or tutees. • Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a structured approach for mathematics and reading requiring set periods of time for implementation of about 25-35 minutes 2 or 3 times a week. • Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: learners alternate between the role of tutor and tutee.

18. Is that it? Have we solved the problem of how to improve attainment?

19. Implementation • These strategies have been shown to be cost-effective in research studies • But when we have tried to implement evidence-based strategies we have not seen system-wide improvement • We don’t know how to get schools/teachers who are not currently doing them to do so in ways that are • True to the key principles • Feasible in real classrooms – with all their constraints • Scalable & replicable • Sustainable

20. Some things we could try • Peer tutoring (seems to be hard to implement badly) • Do proper professional development • Teacher Learning Communities • Comprehensive School Reform • Constant evaluation (with feedback) • Feedback to teachers that is targeted, intensive & supported

21. Let’s not flat-line for another 30 years • Let’s develop strategies that • Are aligned with evidence about likely cost-effectiveness and learning theory • Are feasible, scalable, sustainable • Can (& will) be robustly evaluated, so we will know whether they have worked, and can optimise • Rob.Coe@cem.dur.ac.uk