What a university summer school did for me…

Anne-Marie Canning, the Head of the Widening Participation department at King’s College London, was one of those students who won a place on a life-changing university summer school. Here’s her story.

“I owe a lot to the old, creaky fax machine in Doncaster that whizzed off my Sutton Trust Summer School application in the nick of time about ten years ago. I was in the common room late on a Friday afternoon when my teacher pushed a form in front of me with the words, ‘I’ve just found this summer school thing and I think you should apply. We’ve got half an hour, so hurry!’ I didn’t have much time to think about which course to apply for so ticked the thing I liked doing most at that point in time: reading books, English Literature.

My mum was over the moon when a letter came through the post telling me I’d won a place, and I promptly set about reading all the books by authors I’d never heard of, like James Joyce’s ‘Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man’. They were not easy books to read but it made me realise that the summer school meant business and would be intellectually challenging.

Fast-forward to August and there I was in the glorious summer sunshine at the gates of the University. I felt a kick of homesickness in my stomach but steadied my nerves and went to the sign in desk, where I met by a group of friendly undergraduate students. They showed me to my room and told me what I could expect from the week ahead.

The summer school involved all sorts of exciting things I’d never had the chance to do before, like watch a Shakespeare play, debate my ideas, listen to a lecture, have a tutorial and experience the freedom of an entire library. And as well as learning a lot about my chosen subject I also learnt a lot about myself during that week.

I learnt that there were lots of like-minded people out there, and that they were just as clever (if not more clever!) than me. I also learnt that my northern accent was much, much stronger than I ever imagined it to be! I made some good friends, too, and we all ended the week with a swanky dinner. I went home happy and determined to work hard and get good AS-level grades.

That Autumn I applied to lots of highly selective universities and made sure I talked about my summer school experience in my personal statement. The Autumn after I joined the University of York as a student of English and Related Literatures, and ten years later I am now the head of the team that will be running the Sutton Trust Summer School at King’s College London.

This blog post first appeared on the King’s College website. 

 

Evidence is just the start of finding what works

Lee Elliot Major and Steve Higgins, professor of Education at Durham University argue that effective implementation matters once the evidence for what works has been identified.

In England we spend around £2 billion a year on 170,000 teaching assistants in schools. The total impact of this money on the attainment of our children is zero.  The best evidence we have indicates that for every TA who improves a pupil’s progress there is another whose deployment has a negative impact.

This is a powerful example of why we need evidence based policy and practice, but it also highlights the difficulties of promoting changes to improve practice – because finding that TAs are deployed ineffectively does not tell you what to do about it.

Such issues are soon to be faced across government, following the launch last week of a network of What Works centres to champion evidence-based social policy.

At the launch, Oliver Letwin, Minister of State at the Cabinet Office, said that the biggest question was why government hadn’t done something like this before.  But if government hasn’t, others have, and the centres will be building on existing practicies of evidence use in health and education.

In health, the Cochrane Collaboration this year celebrates two decades of producing systematic research reviews. Its approach has shaped advice offered by the National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence on NHS treatments.

The cultural shifts that introduced evidence-based medicine to surgeries and hospitals 20 years ago are now playing out in classrooms and schools. The What Works education centre will use a toolkit we developed three years ago summarizing thousands of studies to show the best and worst bets for improving pupils’ results. It is the model now being advocated by the Cabinet Office for other policy areas.

Since 2011, the Education Endowment Foundation, a charity that aims to improve the educational achievement of disadvantaged children, has developed this toolkit into a resource for disseminating evidence across the sector. The EEF has overseen a quiet revolution in England’s schools, commissioning some 40 randomized control trials so far.

The toolkit shows that working on teacher-learner interaction – improving feedback to pupils, for example –  gives the biggest bang for the education buck.  Yet our surveys reveal that most head teachers prioritise actions that evidence suggests, on average, have little impact: reducing class sizes or recruiting TAs.

In education, the route to evidence-based policy is particularly challenging, because the navigation instruments are less powerful and predictable than in medicine.  Imagine a world where the laws of nature vary through time and space. That is the reality across the thousands of different classrooms, teachers and children that make up our education system. Over the last 30 years curriculum and assessment have changed many times, and variation in schools and teachers has a profound impact on how an intervention works or doesn’t work.

 We have little idea how to help schools implement the best bets for improvement. Some may need a highly prescriptive programme; others general principles to shape and evaluate a tailored programme.

To return to TAs, for example, the evidence does not mean that they should be scrapped. There are many ways in which TAs might be better recruited, trained, deployed and evaluated. Some approaches will be more effective in lower-performing schools, schools serving a high proportion of children with special needs, or schools with particular teachers. Knowing what works where and for whom could improve a school’s choices about TAs and everything else.

A commitment to what works (strictly, what’s worked) in education must also consider the constantly changing pedagogical landscape. Take phonics teaching: if the current emphasis on phonics becomes routine, then remedial support based on phonics is likely to become less effective than research currently suggests. Children who have failed in a phonics-rich pedagogy may benefit more from a different remedial style.

These are important lessons for the other four planned What Works centres. Evidence can be boring or inconvenient for politicians more interested in an immediate and popular policy fix. But, as Letwin stressed, “this is only the start of a journey, not the destination”, and the outlook at this early stage is promising. This programme has the potential to revolutionise public policy in areas as diverse as ageing, education and policing, replacing dogma and tradition with research and randomised trials. Billions of pounds of public money could be saved.

This post first appeared on Research Fortnight

My Welcome to Yale

18 year-old Lucinda Denney, an A-level student from Blackpool, is one of 12 students already offered places at leading US universities, thanks to the Sutton Trust summer school. As our guest blogger today, she reflects on going to Yale:

When I was accepted to the Sutton Trust’s US Summer School Programme, I could never have even imagined the opportunities that would come as a result of being part of such an unprecedented and truly outstanding scheme.

The experience of travelling to America for the first time, staying at and visiting some of America’s most prestigious universities, having tea at the British Consulate, watching a show on Broadway and then, after I returned to the UK, having to undertake the extensive American application system and prepare for standardised testing was simply a whirlwind of excitement, joy, stress and pure satisfaction.

Despite the ups and downs of the process, the trials and tribulations, one thing did remain a constant: there is no way I would ever have been able to apply to university in the US, and get into Yale no less, without the help of the Sutton Trust and the US-UK Fulbright Commission.

The advice, dedication and sheer commitment of every single member of the team provided me with the support I needed to get through such a demanding process and come out the other side having fulfilled every dream I ever had when I set out on this programme back in the summer of 2012.

I made the decision to apply to university in America because their universities don’t just look at your academic results. They place a far greater value upon what makes a person who they are, the activities they enjoy, the things that inspire them, what drives them, and their past achievements and accomplishments. It cannot be said that universities in the US aren’t known for their superior academic excellence, as they regularly top world university rankings, but it is also the diversity and sheer talent that composes their student bodies that made me want to be a part of such a prestigious university system.

I feel that, before I have even started my time at Yale, that due to being a part of this process and by simply applying to American universities I have gained a sense of independence, the realisation that nothing is ever impossible if you give it your all, a greater feeling of self-worth in my own capabilities and achievements, and most importantly memories and friendships that will undoubtedly last a lifetime.

I found out on December 16th 2012 at 10pm that I had been accepted to Yale as part of their Class of 2017. Although that night is now quite I blur, I do remember the moment the Yale bulldog sung its song of congratulations to me and when I went on to read the Dean’s letter of acceptance.

I was overcome by emotion but I can honestly say that it really was one of the best moments of my life as it made me realise that all of my hard work and commitment to my studies and my extra-curricular activities had finally paid off and I would be hopefully heading off to the university of my dreams in the fall of 2013.