Translating Evidence into Improvement: why is it so hard?

In February Schools NorthEast held their Evidence-based Excellence event, bringing together school leaders, practitioners and experts from across the North East to discuss the specific challenges and barriers to literacy faced by our students.

Amongst a range of speakers focussing on what works, what doesn’t, with examples of good practice from across the North East schools community, CEM Director and Professor of Education, Rob Coe, discussed some of the issues around using evidence to improve outcomes.

Prof Coe’s presentation explored the importance of understanding research and evidence, and ways to make implementation effective, offering his audience 3 key take-away points:

• For an activity as complex, constrained and already well-optimised as teaching, there are no simple solutions
• Significant improvements depend on significant teacher learning
• Evaluating the quality of teaching is much harder than you think (even if you think it is really hard)

Listen to Prof Coe’s presentation.

Presentation question
Is there any evidence in research around what impact improving outcomes, for example at KS2, might have on education in general?