School absenteeism is a significant social and public health problem, and it has considerable negative consequences on the development of children and adolescents not only in the short term but also in the long term. We investigated special education needs (SEN) as a risk factor for absenteeism. For 418,455 mainstream secondary school students…

This article examines the impetus for schools to engage in and with evidence in England's self-improving school system. It begins with an examination of how the education policy environment has changed, shifting from predominantly top-down approaches to school improvement to the current government's focus on schools themselves sourcing and sharing…

The aim of the study was to conduct a randomized control trial of a targeted, facilitated, test anxiety intervention for a group of adolescent students, and to examine the mediating role of uncertain control. Fifty-six participants (male = 19, white = 21, mean age = 14.7 years) were randomly allocated to an early intervention or wait-list control…

'Ability' or attainment grouping can introduce an additional label that influences teachers' expectations of students in specific attainment groups. This paper is based on a survey of 597 teachers across 82 schools and 34 teacher interviews in 10 schools undertaken as part of a large-scale mixed-methods study in England. The paper focuses on…

Previous research suggests impaired metacognitive monitoring and mathematics under-achievement in autism spectrum disorder. Within educational settings, metacognitive monitoring is supported through the provision of feedback (e.g. with goal reminders and by explicitly correcting errors). Given the strength of the relationship between…

Pre-school education has been greatly expanded in the United Kingdom in the last two decades and further expansion is planned. Its provision allows parents to take up employment thus increasing family incomes and it is expected to narrow the gap between socially disadvantaged children and their peers. The latter is important as studies have shown…

Previous studies in both typically and atypically developing children have shown that approximate number system (ANS) abilities predict formal mathematical knowledge later on in life. The current study investigated whether playing specially designed training games that targets the ANS system using nonsymbolic stimuli only would improve preschool…

This study developed, delivered and evaluated an interactive intervention, which targeted three- and four-year-old children's oral language. The intervention was carried out over twice-weekly sessions, for ten weeks. The first weekly session was a group shared storybook reading session with a puppet and the second weekly session consisted of…

The success of witness interviews in the criminal justice system depends on the accuracy of information obtained, which is a function of both amount and quality of information. Attempts to enhance witness retrieval such as mental reinstatement of context have been designed with typically developed adults in mind. In this article, the relative…

Research has demonstrated a link between perspective taking and working memory. Here we used eye tracking to examine the time course with which working memory load (WML) influences perspective-taking ability in a referential communication task and how motivation to take another's perspective modulates these effects. In Experiment 1, where there…

There are concerns that too many young people, from disadvantaged backgrounds, are moving into secondary education in the UK, and elsewhere, without the necessary literacy skills to make progress with the wider secondary school curriculum. A large number of interventions have been proposed to reduce this poverty gradient. This paper summarises the…

The "'Literacy Octopus' Dissemination Trial" aimed to test the impact on pupil outcomes of disseminating research summaries and evidence-based resources to schools. The materials aimed to support teaching and learning of Key Stage 2 literacy and were created by leading organisations with experience of engaging schools in evidence use.…

Music psychologists have established that some forms of musical activity improve intellectual performance, spatial-temporal reasoning and other skills advantageous for learning. In this research, the potential of active music-making for improving pupils' achievement in spatial- temporal reasoning was investigated. As spatial-temporal skills are…

We analyse the prevalence and effectiveness of out-of-school-time (OST) study programmes among secondary aged students, focusing on their potential for reducing socio-economic gaps in educational achievement. Compared to several extant studies, including the only prior study for Britain, whose findings could be affected by heterogeneous…

Background: Practical work is widely seen as a necessary part of a good physics education, but convincing evidence that it impacts positively on pupils' learning is scarce. Recent work suggests the use of talk and discussion might hold the key to making practical work more educationally productive. Purpose: The research question that this study…