EEFective Kent Project

The EEFective Kent Project (EKP) was a four-year partnership between Kent County Council and the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) which closed over the summer of 2023. Both organisations contributed joint funding creating £600,000 to support the implementation of evidence-based approaches and interventions in Kent. The project aimed to support school improvement and the educational outcomes for children across the county. This partnership supported more than half the schools in Kent to apply evidence-based practice in response to their school-specific issues. The last part of the project focused on sustainability. Please find below case studies from the project, resources, conference materials and links to other support.

Making it Work for All: Moving from Implementation to Impact Conference

On Wednesday 14 June 2023, Kent schools, EEF colleagues and other practitioners and experts came together to share what they had achieved during the project. In the list below, you can find the presentations and case studies from all the speakers, including the inspirational keynote presentations from Jonathan Sharples, Professorial Research Fellow at the EEF and Hannah Heron, Specialist for Learning Behaviours at the EEF. There were eight workshops sharing school-based work delivered or supported by Kent colleagues. Part of the legacy of the EEFective Kent Project is the establishment of the KEEHub which shares evidence-based teaching and leadership and was launched at the conference. Please contact the KEEHub for a range of opportunities post the project.

Presentations:

Workshops:

Plenary:

As well as the workshops, there were a number of marketplaces from education providers, that allowed delegates to network and see what these providers had to offer. These included:

The following case studies were generated during the project, some of which were shared at the conference.

Making It Work For All Conference

Evidence Champions

As part of the sustainability programme, from September 2023 the KEEHub will continue to train and support Evidence Champions. Please see below and contact the KEEHub for more information.

Evidence Champions support, encourage and engage colleagues with how to source, access and understand high-quality research evidence, as well as how to apply this to teaching and learning, CPD or school improvement planning. Their work will support school leadership to ensure that planned school improvement activity is shaped by research evidence. This is an in-school role and an exciting opportunity to empower a strong practitioner within the school to be an evidence lead.

The benefits of introducing an Evidence Champion include:

  • Having a member of staff who is research-literate and able to support SLT with the implementation of CPD and policies.
  • It’s a workload win - making evidence-based decisions and implementing effectively means your plans are more likely to work first-time round.
  • It offers a strong professional development opportunity for those interested in exploring research-informed school leadership.
  • Evidence Champions will gain access to a network of like-minded evidence enthusiasts across Kent through the forums, as well as links with the EEF, Kent Associate Research School and Durrington Research school.

Kent's Promising Projects

As part of the sustainability work, there are Kent based trainers for the following programmes. For more information from the EEF about the evidence behind the programmes, please follow the links below. You will also find contact details for the Kent based trainers.

Queen Elizabeth’s Grammar School and Mersham Primary School have provided case studies of their experiences of the Embedding Formative Assessment programme which were delivered by the EFA mentors.

The Stour Academy Trust have shared their experience of introducing 1stClass@Number and the impact this has had across their schools in this case study:

The Education Endowment Foundation

The Education Endowment Foundation has been our partner for the EEFective Kent Project. They are an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. They do this by supporting schools, colleges, and nurseries to improve teaching and learning through better use of evidence.

They do this by:

  • Summarising evidence - reviewing the best available evidence on teaching and learning and presenting in an accessible way.
  • Finding new evidence - funding independent evaluations of programmes and approaches that aim to raise the attainment of children and young people from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds.
  • Putting evidence to use - supporting education practitioners, as well as policymakers and other organisations, to use evidence in ways that improve teaching and learning.

For further information about what they offer and other evidence informed programmes, please visit the Education Endowment Foundation website

Evaluating the EEFective Kent Project

The Institute for Employment Studies (IES), an independent not-for-profit research organisation, has been appointed to carry out research and evaluation as part of the EEFective Kent Project.

Throughout the project, all schools in Kent were invited to take part in a short survey. The answers provided by are confidential and all survey data is anonymous and will not be shared with anyone outside of the research team at IES. Further details about how data is used in this research can be found in the privacy notice

The external evaluation of the whole project has been commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation and will be published by the end of the academic year 2023-24. The research team at the IES would like to hear from any schools who have taken part in a Promising Project with the EEFective Kent Project or Evidence-Based Training course. If you would like to share your views, you can do so using the links below. Please only complete these surveys if you have attended training and have not completed the surveys previously:

The IES are also now inviting all schools in Kent to take part in a short end of project online survey - please complete the IES external evaluation to participate, if you have not already done so.

When completing the above surveys, please make sure that you press submit when you get to the end to ensure your full response is captured.

If you have any questions about the surveys or the evaluation, you can contact Ceri Williams, the Project Manager at IES on Ceri.Williams@employment-studies.co.uk or Rakhee Patel, the Project Director at IES on Rakhee.Patel@employment-studies.co.uk.