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The COVID-19 pandemic has had profound effects on education in both mainstream and special schools. Education in England was considerably disrupted during the 2020/1 and 2021/22 school years. There were two periods of partial school closure when most pupils stayed at home (March-May 2020 and January-March 2021). Schools were asked to prioritise on-site places for vulnerable pupils (i.e. those with an Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP) to address their special educational needs and disabilities (SEND); a social worker; or identified as vulnerable by the local authority or education provider) and the children of key workers. Schools had to adopt strict infection control measures for those attending on site, while simultaneously providing remote teaching/learning activities for pupils at home. This report summarises key findings from a series of surveys and interviews conducted by two research teams in the summer terms of 2020 and 2021. It also draws on other research to put the findings into a wider context. [This report was co-published with ASK Research (United Kingdom).]

In the United Kingdom, the Coronavirus Act relaxed the duty on Local Authorities to provide all of the support set out in pupils' educational, health and care plans (EHCPs). They were expected to use 'reasonable endeavours' to deliver as much of this as possible. This relaxation was lifted in September 2020, meaning that from that point the legally required support stated in EHCPs should have been fully reinstated. In the first national lockdown most special providers reported they were only able to offer a very limited number of pupils in-school places. On average their capacity was 30% of their usual intake. In January 2021, the Prime Minister announced a further national lockdown, requiring educational settings to close to the majority of pupils for the second time. In this report this lockdown in early 2021 is referred as the second lockdown (although there was a national lockdown at the end of 2020, educational settings remained fully open). A briefing paper had been published setting out a summary of what happened during this second lockdown, and in the term following the expected 'return to normal' (i.e. all educational establishments being fully open as before the pandemic). This report provides all of the detail gathered to inform that paper. It is based on: (1) A survey of Headteachers from 190 special schools and colleges in England. This represents an 11% response rate across the sector; (2) Depth interviews with senior leaders of 40 special school or colleges; and (3) Depth interviews with 40 parents of children with EHCPs who attend this type of setting. [For the briefing paper, "The Reported Effects of the Pandemic on Pupils in Special Schools and Colleges and What They Need Now," see ED615418. This report was co-published with ASK Research (United Kingdom).]

Following on from a previous study of what happened to provision in special settings during lockdowns, this study reports what effects Headteachers felt the pandemic has had on pupils with Education, Health and Care Plans (EHCPs). It involved a representative survey of Headteachers in special schools and colleges in England, followed by depth interviews with a sample of Headteachers and parents of pupils in these settings. Findings show that: (1) Pupils in special settings experienced greater learning losses than pupils in mainstream settings due to the pandemic; (2) Pupils with EHCPs have experienced further developmental losses; (3) Legally required Health and Care input has been severely disrupted; (4) The wellbeing of families and staff has been negatively impacted; and (5) Proposed recovery support does not meet the needs of pupils with SEND. [This report was co-published with ASK Research (United Kingdom).]

The Nuffield Early Language Intervention is designed to improve the spoken language ability of children during the transition from nursery to primary school. It is targeted at children with relatively poor spoken language skills. Three sessions per week are delivered to groups of two to four children starting in the final term of nursery and continuing in the first two terms of reception in primary school. Children in primary school also attend an additional two 15-minute individual sessions per week. All sessions focus on listening, narrative and vocabulary skills. Work on phonological awareness is introduced in the final ten weeks. The intervention was developed by researchers from the University of York with funding from the Nuffield Foundation. The communications charity I CAN was enlisted to train teaching assistants and nursery staff to deliver the programme. This report evaluates the I CAN-led model for the 30-week programme described above and also a shorter 20-week version delivered only in reception year. The impact of these two programmes on the language skills of 350 children in 34 schools was tested using a randomised controlled trial design. Schools with attached nursery schools or nursery classes in Yorkshire and the South East were recruited to the trial in 2013. Children identified as having relatively low language skills were randomly allocated to the 30-week programme, the 20-week programme or standard provision. The qualitative fieldwork carried out as part of the project involved interviews with a total of 12 staff in 8 of the 34 participating schools. Key conclusions include: (1) The Nuffield Early Language Intervention had a positive impact on the language skills of children in the trial. This is true for both the more expensive, 30-week version, starting in nursery, and the 20-week version, delivered only in school; (2) Children receiving the 30-week version experienced the equivalent of about four months of additional progress, compared with about 2 months additional progress for the 20-week version. Both results are unlikely to have occurred by chance, though results for the 30-week version are more secure; (3) The evaluation did not provide reliable evidence that either version of the programme had a positive impact on children's word-level literacy skills; (4) Teaching assistants delivering the programme reported that they found it difficult to devote enough time to it, and that support from senior staff was required to protect the programme time; and (5) Staff in participating schools reported that the programme had a positive impact on children's language skills and confidence. They thought that the factors which contributed to this included the small-group format, the activities covered, and the focus on narrative and vocabulary work.

Paired Reading is a peer tutoring programme in secondary schools which trains teachers to support and encourage the regular tutoring of Year 7 pupils (aged 11-12 years) by Year 9 pupils (aged 13-14 years). The Paired Reading programme aims to improve pupils' general literacy in addition to speaking and listening skills. This is achieved by pupils working together to follow the Paired Reading steps to choose the material to read, and discuss this, together with the older pupil (tutor) supporting the reading, correcting errors and praising the younger pupil (tutee) throughout. The 16-week programme is intended to take place during normal school hours in timetabled sessions, for 20 minutes each week. Teachers in participating schools received training from the delivery team, a detailed programme manual and extensive digital resources. The impact of Paired Reading on 2,736 pupils in 120 classes in ten participating schools (1,370 in Year 7 and 1,366 in Year 9) was tested using a cluster randomised controlled trial design with 58 classes randomly allocated to receive the programme and 62 classes allocated to the control condition. Schools from the North Tyneside local authority (LA) and in neighbouring LAs of South Tyneside and Sunderland took part in the trial over the 2013/14 academic year. Key conclusions include: (1) This evaluation does not provide any evidence that the Paired Reading programme had an impact on overall reading ability, sentence completion and passage comprehension of participating pupils; (2) There was no evidence of the Paired Reading programme having an effect on overall reading ability, sentence completion and passage comprehension of FSM pupils; and (3) There was some variation in the intervention group schools in terms of the programme setup and delivery. There was also a varying level of support provided to pupils within the intervention by the teachers involved, based mainly on the reading ability of the pupils. However, these appear to be natural variations between the settings of the schools involved and are unlikely to have affected the dosage of the intervention for the pupils involved.

Act, Sing, Play (ASP) offered music and drama tuition to Year 2 pupils. The aim of the programme was to evaluate whether music workshops had a bigger impact than drama workshops in terms of pupils' maths and literacy attainment. The evaluation was based on the hypothesis that participation in high-quality music instruction promotes educational attainment over and above instruction in other artistic pursuits (see Schellenberg, 2004). The ASP programme was developed specifically for this trial and ran from September 2013 to June 2014: 909 pupils participated in 19 schools across London, Essex, Sussex and Coventry. In each participating Year 2 class, pupils were randomly allocated to one of three groups: violin or cello workshops (ASP-strings), singing lessons (ASP-singing), or drama workshops (ASP-drama). The two music groups (strings and singing) represented the treatment arms of the trial. Students in the ASP-drama workshops represented the control. Each workshop had around 10 students. Workshops were held once a week over 32 weeks. The programme was delivered by Creative Futures, funded by the Education Endowment Foundation, and independently evaluated by NatCen. The following conclusions summarise the project outcome: (1) This evaluation provides no evidence that ASP-music workshops had a greater impact on maths or literacy attainment than ASP-drama workshops; (2) Analysis of students receiving free school meals similarly found no evidence that ASP-music workshops had a greater impact on maths or literacy than ASP-drama workshops; (3) The process evaluation suggested that some tutors--particularly those with less experience of teaching groups of primary school children--needed more guidance on how to run their sessions; (4) Although not necessarily typical, there were related concerns that some strings workshops struggled to keep students focussed on learning music; and (5) Class teachers reported that confidence and social skills had improved for some pupils. Teachers also felt it was important that children from disadvantaged backgrounds had the opportunity to learn a new skill that they might otherwise not be able to access. Findings from this trial have a high degree of security. Results include the following: (1) This evaluation found no evidence that the ASP-music workshops had a greater impact than the ASP-drama workshops in terms of maths or literacy attainment; (2) Similarly, there was no evidence that, among pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM), music workshops had an impact on attainment when compared to the control group (ASP-drama); (3) Interviews with school staff and workshop tutors suggested that there were differences in the way the programme was implemented by different tutors, reflecting the flexible nature of the programme; (4) In general, the process evaluation suggested that pupils enjoyed participating in the program, and were engaged. Teachers also reported that some pupils' confidence and social-skills improved during the program.

The Visible Classroom project aimed to use lesson transcripts to promote effective teaching practice and improve the attainment of pupils in primary school. The approach used "real-time captioning" technology to generate a live transcript of teachers' speech in lessons and was developed by the University of Melbourne and technology provider Ai-Media UK. Lesson transcripts were made available to teachers and used as the basis of a personalised "dashboard" which provided information about key features of lessons, such as the balance of teacher and pupil talk, the amount of "thinking time" given to pupils and the types of questioning used. In addition, live transcripts could be projected directly onto a whiteboard or tablets. Pupils could use the transcripts to review learning instructions and goals, and used the devices to provide feedback on their learning at the end of each lesson. This pilot evaluation involved ten primary schools in London and the West Midlands. Participating schools received training and followed the approach over two terms in the academic year 2013-14. The evaluation had three aims. First, to assess the feasibility of the technology and overall approach. Second, to provide recommendations that could be used to improve the approach in the future. Third, to assess the promise of the approach, and its components, to inform any future trial. This project was co-funded by the EEF and Nominet Trust as part of a funding round focused on digital technology. Key conclusions include: (1) Overall, teachers were positive about the Visible Classroom approach, and believed that it had the potential to benefit both themselves and their pupils; (2) Most teachers were adept at using the technology in the classroom, even if they had not done so before this trial. There were some technical problems related to hardware, software, and internet connections, but after an initial bedding-in period most were overcome; (3) Though few teachers spent time reviewing the verbatim transcripts, the online dashboard and more detailed feedback reports based on the transcripts were seen as valuable tools to support teacher development. To maximise the impact of the feedback, teachers would benefit from being given greater opportunity to review and discuss their practice with peers and managers; (4) Pupils did not seem to use live transcripts of teacher dialogue regularly, consistently, or in a way that would suggest an obvious benefit in learning. Teachers had mixed views on whether the live transcripts might have additional benefit for disadvantaged pupils or their peers; and (5) Further research would be required to assess the level of impact the approach has on academic attainment. Prior to considering a full trial it would be valuable to undertake some additional development work to refine the approach.

The Literacy Intervention Toolkit (LIT) programme aims to improve the reading ability of children in Year 7 who scored below Level 4 at the end of primary school using a method known as reciprocal teaching. Reciprocal teaching methods encourage children to 'become the teacher'. They are taught how to apply four comprehension strategies: summarising, clarifying, questioning, and predicting. These strategies enable children to check that they understand the content of the material they are reading and can make inferences based on what they have read. The LIT programme is tightly structured, providing training to staff as well as a set of detailed lesson plans on the use of reciprocal teaching to deliver basic instruction in literacy. However, the method of delivery is not particularly prescriptive. It can be used to teach whole classes or small groups, can be delivered by teachers or teaching assistants, and can be offered in addition to or instead of regular English classes. In this evaluation, children typically received 3-4 hours of LIT tuition per week for eight months, mostly delivered in small groups. The programme was devised by the Hackney Learning Trust, who delivered the training sessions for staff and developed a detailed set of lesson plans for them to follow. The primary outcome was reading ability as assessed by scores on the Access Reading Test (ART). The LIT programme was tested using a randomized control trial (RCT). 41 schools were recruited, with 22 schools randomly allocated to a treatment group and 19 schools to a control group. Key conclusions included: (1) This evaluation cannot conclude with certainty what impact the LIT programme had on reading ability for those pupils who received the intervention; (2) This evaluation did not find evidence of a significant impact on reading ability at the year group level (comparing all Year 7 pupils in treatment schools with similar Year 7 pupils in control schools.); (3) Teachers felt that the programme facilitated 'healthy debate' within the classroom, increased confidence in pupils who struggled with core literacy skills, and promoted independent learning. However, they did not feel it worked well with children with underlying cognitive issues requiring intensive vocabulary support; and (4) Feedback from those who used the programme suggested groups of 5-6 children led by qualified teachers or teaching assistants with experience of delivering literacy interventions worked best.

The aims of this working paper were to investigate whether taking part in out of school activities during primary school is linked with end of primary school attainment and social, emotional and behavioural outcomes, for all children and specifically for children from economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The analysis is based on the Millennium Cohort Study (MCS) survey data linked to administrative data holding the cohort children's Key Stage 1 (KS1) and Key Stage 2 (KS2) attainment scores. In addition to looking at KS2 attainment (total point score, English and maths) we also investigated social, emotional and behavioural outcomes using the Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire (SDQ) total difficulties and prosocial skills scores. The results presented in this paper are based on logistic and multiple linear regression analysis. Results showed that sports clubs and "other" (unspecified) club participation was positively associated with attainment outcomes at age 11, when controlling for prior attainment. Participating in organised sports or physical activity was also positively linked to social, emotional and behavioural outcomes. Among disadvantaged children, after school club emerged as the only organised activity linked to child outcomes; participation was linked to both higher KS2 attainment and prosocial skills. The implications of these findings for further research, policy and practice are discussed. Appended to the report are: (1) KS2 Attainment regression tables; and (2) SDQ outcomes regression tables. A bibliography is included.

The Sutton Trust has always recognised the importance of fair school admissions to improving social mobility. Researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), the University of Cambridge, and NatCen Social Research (NatCen), along with David Jesson from the University of York, were asked by the Sutton Trust to investigate entry into grammar schools by students from more socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds. The project had three elements: (1) an historical perspective of the position of grammar schools with regards to the admission of students from more disadvantaged backgrounds (David Jesson, University of York); (2) an assessment of entry into grammar schools for disadvantaged pupils (IFS); and (3) interviews with head teachers about the extent to which primary and grammar schools undertake outreach designed to help more disadvantaged students (NatCen). These three elements have been pulled together into this summary report. A copy of the full reports for each of the three elements is published on the Sutton Trust website. [Foreword by Peter Lampl.]