Education Endowment Foundation provides boost to developing evidence-based practices for poorest students

This summer saw a promising glimpse of the coalition government’s will to back the development and growth of evidence-based interventions in education, through the formation of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF).  Under the guidance of the Sutton Trust and Impetus Trust, the EEF is planning to invest as much as £200m over the next 15 years in initiatives that raise the achievement of pupils in the most challenging circumstances. Managed at arms length from government, the EEF aims to "identify, develop, support and evaluate practical projects, with a focus on innovation and scaling up programmes that are cost-effective and replicable". 

At the heart of the EEF's commitment to proving ‘what works’, approximately 10% of the fund is being allocated to rigorous and independent evaluations of the funded projects, including the use of robust experimental trials. In an article for the Times Education Supplement, Chairman of the Sutton Trust, Sir Peter Lampl, outlined that the EEF ".. is not about showering schools with small amounts of money and hoping for the best - we want to fund sizeable projects that can be properly tested for impact."