For decades there have been calls by concerned stakeholders to improve the quality of education research, and some progress has been made towards creating a more secure evidence base in some areas. More programmes and approaches that have a reasonable evidence base are now also being used in schools (but not in policy, and not necessarily because…

Background: A raft of initiatives and reforms have been introduced in many countries to attract and recruit school teachers, many of which do not have a clear evidence base, so their effectiveness remains unclear. Prior research has been largely correlational in design. This paper describes a rigorous and comprehensive review of international…

While education technology has been widely used in classrooms, and considerable investments have been made to support its use in the UK, the evidence base for many such rapidly changing technologies is weak, and their efficacy is unclear. The aim of this paper is to systematically review and synthesise empirical research on the use of technology…

This paper describes a randomised controlled trial conducted with 10 secondary schools in England to evaluate the impact and feasibility of Fresh Start as an intervention to help new entrants with low prior literacy. Fresh Start is a synthetic phonics programme for small groups of pupils, here implemented three times per week over 22 weeks. The…

There is widespread international concern that young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and some ethnic minorities are less likely to continue education or training after compulsory schooling, or are less likely to follow the highest-status and prestigious routes. Based on work done in the UK, this paper presents the results of a systematic…

This paper is based on a series of previous research studies looking at the impact and development of teachers in the UK and internationally. It suggests that there is no convincing evidence, in terms of test outcomes, that some teachers are more or less effective with equivalent pupils. This is not necessarily because teachers are not…

In the context of existing "quantitative"/"qualitative" schisms, this paper briefly reminds readers of the current practice of testing for statistical significance in social science research. This practice is based on a widespread confusion between two conditional probabilities. A worked example and other elements of logical argument demonstrate…

We report here the overall results of a cluster randomised controlled trial of the use of computer-aided instruction with 672 Year 7 pupils in 23 secondary school classes in the north of England. A new piece of commercial software, claimed on the basis of publisher testing to be effective in improving reading after just six weeks of use in the…

This paper considers enjoyment of formal education for young people aged 14 to 16, largely from their own perspective, based on the view of around 3000 students in England. The data include documentary analysis, official statistics, interviews and surveys with staff and students. Enjoyment of school tends to be promoted by factors such as…

In this paper I reflect on the findings of a number of loosely related research projects undertaken with colleagues over the last ten years. Their common theme is equity, in formal education and beyond, in wider family and social settings, and with inequity expressed as the stratification of a variety of educational outcomes. The projects are…

When governments and pressure groups attend only to research that suits their political purposes, it makes a mockery of the idea of evidence-informed policy and practice. In this article, the author cites examples of research that picked up weak and misleading evidence for political purposes. The author argues that researchers are tied in to the…