POLICY AND PRACTICE Success for All


studies, with all of the evaluations taking place in deprived communities. It is a promising approach to the education of at-risk pupils and as such it was mentioned in the recent report by Graham Allen MP, Early Intervention: The Next Steps. However, although there is a strong, positive research base for Success for All in the US, we were not certain that these fi ndings would generalise to UK pupils and schools. A small number of studies previously conducted in the UK have suggested positive results, but these have only involved a small number of schools. We therefore decided to conduct a large-scale national evaluation of the programme


Evaluation


In summer 2008, letters were sent out to SFA schools to invite them to participate in our evaluation. Only SFA schools who were fully implementing the programme were approached because SFA is designed as a whole-school programme. Also, we wanted to conduct a longitudinal study (ie, we wanted to follow the children’s progress over a number of years) and only if schools were fully implementing the programme could we be confi dent that their experiences were similar and comparable.


Our study is a quasi-experimental matched


study, which means that we matched the characteristics of the SFA schools who agreed to participate in the project with possible “control” schools. For example, our SFA schools had, on average, over 40% of pupils receiving free school meals and over 40% with English as an Additional Language. Possible control schools were then approached to


Results When we analysed the data from these two years we found that there were statistically signifi cant school-level effects, with consistently higher attainment for the Success for All schools in comparison to the control schools. Of particular importance by the end of Year 1 was the effect on the


Common sense suggests a more comprehensive approach.


However, common sense often confounds us, which is why we need evidence


participate in the study. All schools had to agree to individual testing of their children and to allow classroom observations. Comparison schools continued with their ordinary beginning literacy teaching. Fortunately responses were high, and in September 2008 individual assessments were conducted with children who had just entered Reception classes in 40 primary schools around the country (20 SFA schools and 20 control schools). These assessments focused on children’s receptive vocabulary (using the British Picture Vocabulary Scale). This formed the pretest – a measure of children’s language acquisition when they entered formal schooling. This was taken into account in all subsequent analyses and allowed us to measure the value added by the programme.


comprehension measure as comprehension is, of course, the ultimate goal of teaching reading. It should be noted however, that these results represent those for all SFA schools grouped together and all comparison schools grouped together, not for any individual school.


Working with schools For practical and internal reasons two Success for All schools left the study during the lifetime of this project, which has meant that we have also “lost” two control schools. This is unfortunate. However, we have worked with 36 schools for more than two years (and with more than 1,000 pupils). We continue to work with them today – in summer 2011 we re-visited the children and hope to do so next summer also. Although


What we know


● We have conducted a large-scale, national evaluation of Success for All literacy in primary schools in the UK.


● Both years of the study have found positive effect sizes on literacy measures in favour of the Success for All schools.


● Evaluations of this nature are possible, desirable, and have signifi cant educational implications for both policy and practice.


The following summer (2009) we returned to the schools and administered end-of- year assessments with the same pupils. These assessments focused on children’s letter and word recognition and their phonemic awareness (through the Letter Identifi cation, Word Identifi cation, and Word Attack subscales of the Woodcock Reading Mastery Tests-Revised). In summer 2010 (when the pupils were reaching the end of Year 1) we repeated these assessments but also included a reading fl uency and comprehension measure to refl ect their growing literacy (the York Assessment of Reading Comprehension).


we have not yet analysed the results, visits to schools indicate that the Success for All schools will have continued to build on their previous successes. More importantly, all the schools involved have been welcoming and interested in the research and are happy to talk about the programmes they use and their decisions for doing so. All this is extremely helpful to our understanding as researchers and we are very grateful to all the teachers (and children and parents) who have accommodated and helped us in our work. We hope that the schools also gain something from participating in our research, and we make sure we keep them updated on the project.


Implications for policy and practice Finally, we feel that this study is valuable for two main reasons: ● Firstly, it demonstrates that large-scale and longitudinal evaluations are viable and desirable. As schools are given more choice and less top-down prescription, more schools should have opportunities to choose among proven alternatives to help their children succeed. However, policies should require that schools adopt programmes with evidence of effectiveness; and


● Secondly, it has shown that the Success for All programme can bring signifi cant gains to pupils in schools working in challenging circumstances. The key limitation to this study is generalisability – the schools implementing the programme chose to do so, and the fi ndings can only be confi dently applied to those schools that make similar choices. However, both in engaging with research and in adopting new practices, teachers have often shown themselves to be ahead of policy, and leading the way.


About the author Louise Tracey is a research fellow in the Institute for Effective Education, and previously worked in the Teacher and Leadership Research Centre in the School of Education at the University of Nottingham. Her research interests include research methods, early professional development, and teacher retention.


Further reading


Allen G (2011), Early Intervention: The Next Steps. London: HMG.


Slavin RE et al (2009), Effective Beginning Reading Programs. Available through the Best Evidence Encyclopaedia website, www.bestevidence.org.uk.


winter 2012 Better: Evidence-based Education 17


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