Log in
Childhood obesity is an increasing problem in the UK with roughly one in seven school aged children in Scotland and England being classified as obese. The picture is similar in Wales where the prevalence is one in eight. The direct cost of obesity to the NHS is estimated to be £4.2bn a year, with this set to rise if the causes of childhood obesity are not addressed. The contribution of the research described below to tackling this issue is manifold: it has enabled the development and improvement of child health interventions/programmes; it has allowed commissioners and programme leads to make more informed decisions about investment in these interventions/programmes; and it has contributed to the development of regional healthy weight strategies and national guidelines on weight management.
The Urban Scholars Programme (USP) entails an innovative and sustained intervention study, which was launched by Professor Valsa Koshy in response to requests from local authorities (LAs) to address the `wastage of talent' among inner-city teenagers and to support schools with the implementation of the UK's Widening Participation Policy (2000), aimed at encouraging students from poorer backgrounds to study at university. The impact of the USP research has been evident at different levels. The direct beneficiaries are the students (aged 12 to 16 years) attending the programme, their families and teachers from 33 London schools in areas of high social deprivation. Through dissemination activities and the significant interest from educationalists, government policy makers, Local Authorities, Widening Participation (WP) officers in universities and academics, the project's research outcomes have had significant impact, both nationally and internationally. Through a range of additional knowledge transfer activities, the programme model and a toolkit of support materials continue to be made available to universities and schools.
Educational effectiveness and improvement research by the University of Southampton School of Education has contributed significantly to the design and implementation of educational policy and practice at both national and international levels. Impact has been predominantly in the area of policy, but the School's ground-breaking research has also shown the effects of (and practice within) `good' schools and has pioneered novel approaches to school improvement, school organisation and the use of data in schools. The Educational Effectiveness and Improvement Group has helped establish the International Congress for School Effectiveness and Improvement (ICSEI) and given it a global reach; its research has directly informed policy implementation through academy chains, schools and local authorities in the UK generally and in Wales in particular, and internationally in the US, China, Sweden, Cyprus and Chile. The School's worldwide reach is among the most widespread in Education.
This case study represents the work of the Pyramid research team within the INSTIL Education Research Group (INSTIL ERG). Research at the University of West London is characterised by an ambition to promote `useful knowledge' and this case study, with its focus on providing evidence to inform and direct practice, fits within this approach. The case study describes the first rigorous evaluation of the impact of Pyramid after-school clubs that aim to improve the socio-emotional wellbeing of vulnerable children. The work of the Pyramid research team provides an empirical evidence base to support the work of a range of stakeholders including: practitioners; policy makers and researchers in the field of children's socio-emotional well-being, and the children and their families. Drawing on the evidence base, these impacts include the securing of funding for the continuation of Pyramid clubs in schools and informing future development and extension of the Pyramid club intervention for delivery to other age groups.
Improving the quality of school leadership has been a key priority for both New Labour and Coalition education policy (see for example `The Importance of Teaching' White paper) since 1997. This led to the establishment of the National College for School Leadership (NC) in 2000. Between 2004 and 2009 the NC commissioned six external evaluations of its programmes from Sheffield Hallam University (total value: £276k). The studies have impacted on the range and quality of the College's provision and hence have on the quality of leadership in schools by enabling the NC to:
The Effective Provision of Pre-school Education (EPPE) project led by Edward Melhuish produced major government policy changes since 2008. EPPE is a longitudinal study focussing on the impact of early childhood education and the home learning environment on educational and social development. The government's recent decision to extend free early years provision for disadvantaged children was based on EPPE's finding (highlighted in several government reviews) that good quality early education has long-term benefits, in particular for disadvantaged children. EPPE also demonstrated the critical role of better-qualified early years staff, which has led to new policy recommendations on staff training.
Since 2008, UK and overseas policies, practices and tools aimed at evaluating and promoting quality in schools and supporting student learning, attainment and progress have been profoundly influenced by research conducted at the University of Bristol. The work began in 2001 in the Graduate School of Education; from 2005, the School's efforts were complemented by those of the Centre for Multilevel Modelling. The research has generated original knowledge about school performance measures and school, teacher and context factors which promote student learning. This knowledge has transformed government and institutional policies and practices. New improved methods of evaluating schools and interventions in education (and other sectors) have been demonstrated and widely disseminated, thereby enhancing public understanding of institutional league tables and facilitating the scaling-up of new approaches nationally. The development of statistical methodology and MLwiN software and training has enabled more rigorous and sensitive quantitative analysis of educational datasets around the world, as well as wider take-up of this methodology by non academics.
Sure Start, the flagship New Labour anti-poverty initiative launched in 1999, was an area-based early intervention targeting pockets of social and economic deprivation in England. The multi- disciplinary National Evaluation of Sure Start (NESS), to which Professor Angela Anning was the central educational contributor, was the largest social science evaluation contract ever awarded in the UK. Findings were continually fed back to ministers and civil servants to inform policy and practice. Impacts (discussed below, section 4) include:
(1) systemic changes in integrated services for vulnerable families;
(2) rethinking the resourcing and funding of Children's Centres;
(3) revision of training and qualifications of early childhood staff;
(4) enhancing the role of family support and parenting projects.
During the last 20 years Mascie-Taylor's research has had a significant influence on both the UK and Bangladesh governments' policy, practice and understanding in relation to food supplementation and the association between poverty and undernutrition. This research was responsible for demonstrating that existing approaches to improving nutrition were not effective, and suggested reasons for this. As a result of this advice, both the policy and programme approach were changed in 2011. By being the catalyst for these changes, the study has benefited the poor of Bangladesh, improving their health and wellbeing while supporting the introduction of these changes which have led to improved levels of nutrition and reduced individual and household poverty. For example participants of the programme (n=250,000 households ~ 1million individuals) reported ten-fold increases in savings and reduced prevalence of chronic illness, from 15.6% to 4.8% between 2010-12.
Agreed by world governments in 2000, the UN's Millennium Development Goals established targets for global improvement of poverty incidence, education, health, environmental sustainability and gender equality by 2015. In 2008 Jeff Waage led a consortium of the University of London's Bloomsbury Colleges in a unique project commissioned by The Lancet culminating in The Lancet's publication of a monograph identifying the MDGs shortcomings, with recommendations for future goal setting. Its authority, novel approach and timeliness made a substantial contribution to current discourse on international development and have supported continued research and policy engagement on this critical global policy process.