The Teaching and Learning Toolkit is an accessible summary of education research. It is designed to support teachers, school leaders, and policy makers who are making decisions about how to improve learning outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged children and youths (See introductory video here).
The Toolkit presents 30 approaches to improving teaching and learning, each summarised in terms of:
- its average impact on attainment;
- its cost;
- the security of the evidence supporting it.
The Toolkit does not make definitive claims as to what will work to improve outcomes in a given school. Rather, it provides high-quality information about what is likely to be beneficial based on existing evidence; i.e., “best bets” to influence learning outcomes in a specific context.
The Toolkit is a live resource that is regularly updated as new findings from high-quality research become available, including those from EEF-funded projects. We welcome comments and inquiries as well as suggestions for new topics in future updates of the Toolkit at [email protected].
Using the Toolkits
The Toolkit is designed to support teachers, school leaders, and policy makers who are making decisions about how to improve learning outcomes. It is based on real life data on the outcomes of particular approaches that have been applied in schools.
The Toolkit does not make definitive claims as to what will work to improve outcomes in a given school. Rather, it provides high quality information about what is likely to be beneficial based on existing evidence, i.e., ‘best bets’ for what might work in your own context.
As the Toolkit does not provide definitive answers, it should not be used in isolation. Your professional judgement and expertise are also needed to utilize the Toolkit information in making an evidence-based decision about what will work best in your school and specific context.
Here are our top tips for enhancing the effectiveness of your Toolkit use:
1. Read past the headlines. Every approach in the Toolkit has a dedicated page which provides important cost and impact details for a better understanding of the findings. For example, the average impact headline of “Parental engagement” shows a “moderate” effect, with 4 additional months’ progress in pupil learning outcomes. However, this tool’s page shows a “high” impact in early years settings and on literacy skills (+5 months in both). The average impact headline of “Collaborative learning approaches” also shows a “high” effect (+5 months), while the tool’s page shows 6 additional months’ progress in secondary schoolsو and even 10 in science.
2. Consider security, cost, and impact together. The most impactful approaches do not always provide the best value for money. For example, “Reducing class size” has a positive average impact (+2 additional months’ progress). However, its cost is “very high” given the need for new teachers, with a cost rating of 5 out of 5). Other approaches have had the same impact (or even higher) at a lower cost (e.g., “Within class attainment grouping”).
The security of the evidence is also important. For example, “Homework” has an average of +5 additional months’ progress. However, evidence security shows a “low” rating (1 padlock only). That is, evidence security is very limited.
3. Use your professional judgment to apply the evidence. The Toolkit summarises evidence on the impact of approaches tested in the past in other settings on pupil learning outcomes. Nevertheless, it is important to consider your school’s context and apply your professional judgement to make a well-informed decision about whether or not to introduce it to your pupils. For example, “parental engagement” approaches have had an average impact of +4 additional months’ progress. However, the evidence suggests that it can be difficult to get parents engaged in programmes in the first place. Therefore, specific knowledge of your school and its pupils is needed before you can decide whether a parental engagement approach would be feasible for you
Impact
Additional months' progress
The impact measure shows the number of additional months of progress made, on average, by children and young people who received the intervention compared to peers who did not.
For example, the research studies included in the “Feedback” strand show that improving the quality of feedback had an average impact of 6 additional months’ progress. This means that pupils in the classes where feedback interventions were provided made an average of 6 additional months’ progress compared to peers in other classes.
The months of additional progress estimates are based on ‘effect sizes’ reported in global research studies, which measures the size of the difference between two groups in a comparable way. However, it can be difficult to understand what a given effect size actually means for the progress of children and young people. Therefore, we translate effect sizes into the months’ progress measure, as shown in the table below.
Months' progress
Effect size from...
to...
Description
–
–
No clear impact given the limited available evidence.
-0.01
0.01
Very low or no impact
1
0.02
0.09
Low impact
2
0.10
0.18
Low impact
3
0.19
0.26
Moderate impact
4
0.27
0.35
Moderate impact
5
0.36
0.44
High impact
6
0.45
0.52
Very high impact
7
0.53
0.61
Very high impact
8
0.62
0.69
High impact
9
0.70
0.78
Very high impact
10
0.79
0.87
Very high impact
Notes:
(i) Effect sizes are presented to the nearest 2 decimal places.
(ii) The null impact (–) does not necessarily mean that the tool has no impact, rather reflects limited available evidence. For example, the research studies included in “Outdoor adventure learning” show a consistent positive impact, but the limited number of studies (9 only) did not allow for a meta analysis.
The null impact finding applies to four tools: “Aspiration Interventions,” “Learning styles,” “Outdoor adventure learning,” and “School uniform.”
(iii) In negative effect sizes, the conversion from effect size to months of additional progress is of the same size as shown in the table above but negative in value. If the months' progress figure is negative, this does not necessarily imply negative progress. Rather, it means that pupils have made less progress than would be expected without the intervention. The Toolkit prioritises effect sizes derived from systematic reviews of research and meta-analyses of studies. Approaches are only included in the Toolkit if there are effect sizes available which can be used to create a months’ progress estimate.
Evidence strength
The 'padlock' rating
The Toolkit presents a rating of the security of the evidence for each tool, which is illustrated on the Toolkit website using a padlock icon. Security rating is, therefore, sometimes referred to as the 'padlock' rating, providing an overall estimate of the security of the evidence to support decision-making in schools.
The 'padlock' rating for each strand is based on:
- the number and types of research studies available;
- the outcomes measured in those studies;
- the quality of the studies and whether they enable researchers to draw conclusions about impact;
- the consistency of the impact estimates in the different studies.
The following description clarifies what each padlock rating means:
? = Very limited evidence: No evidence reviews available, only individual research studies.
? ? = Limited evidence: At least one evidence review. Reviews include studies with relevant outcomes, and those with methods which enable researchers to draw weak conclusions about impact.
? ? ? = Moderate evidence: At least two evidence reviews. Reviews include studies with relevant outcomes, and those with methods and analysis which enable researchers to draw moderate conclusions about impact.
? ? ? ? = Extensive evidence: At least 3 evidence reviews. Reviews include studies with highly relevant outcomes, and those with methods and analysis which enable researchers to draw strong conclusions about impact. Impact estimates are broadly consistent across studies.
? ? ? ? ? = Very Extensive evidence: At least 5 evidence reviews. Reviews are recent, and include studies with highly relevant outcomes, and those with methods and analysis which enable researchers to draw strong conclusions about impact. Impact estimates are consistent across studies.
Cost
The cost estimates in the Toolkit are based on the approximate costs of adopting an approach on a class of 25 pupils.
Cost estimates can include:
- the cost of new resources, such as IT hardware or software;
- the cost of training courses and professional development programs to support learning a new approach;
- the cost of activities for pupils such as outdoor education programmes or music tuition.
Cost estimates do not include resources which are needed for the approach but are expected to be already available in schools, such as interactive whiteboards, or teachers (unless an additional teacher is necessary to deliver the approach). We believe that additional expenditure estimates are the most useful figures to present to school leaders who are deciding how to allocate budgets.
Presenting the cost for each tool also allows schools to consider the cost-effectiveness of different approaches alongside their impact. For example, both “One to one tuition” and “Peer tutoring” have an average impact of 5 months of additional months’ progress. However, the former is considerably more expensive on average.
The cost ratings are based on a 5-point scale, as shown below:
Cost estimate
Description
£
Very low: up to £2,000 (approx. 1,773 JOD) per year per class of 25 pupils, or less than £80 (approx. 71 JOD) per pupil per year.
££
Low: £2,001 to £5,000 (approx. 1,774 to 4,433 JOD) per year per class of 25 pupils, or up to £200 (approx. 177 JOD) per pupil per year.
£££
Moderate: £5,001 to £18,000 (approx. 4,434 to 15,959 JOD) per year per class of 25 pupils, or up to £720 (approx. 638 JOD) per pupil per year.
££££
High: £18,001 to £30,000 (approx. 15,959 to 26,598 JOD) per year per class of 25 pupils, or up to £1,200 (approx. 1,064 JOD) per pupil.
£££££
Very high: over £30,000 (approx. 26,598 JOD) per year per class of 25 pupils, or over £1,200 (approx. 1,064 JOD) per pupil.
Notes:
(i) Cost-related information needs to be carefully considered due to the lack of available estimates in the Arab region, and those for each tool may differ across Arab and global contexts.
(ii) The cost in JOD reflects the British Pound Sterling to Jordanian Dinar exchange rate at the publication of this introduction in May 2023.