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Cathy Potter's edublog | Teacher & Educational Advisor

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Cathy Potter's edublog: Thinking about teaching and learning, educational disadvantage and the psychodynamics of the classroom.

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Coached for the classroom - Jessica Calarco

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Coached for the classroom - Jessica Calarco

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I slide I used in a presentation on the ideas in my book, Making Kids Cleverer has been getting a bit of love on Twitter, with New Zealand school principal referring to it as containing what might be “the three best sentences in education”. This could be the three best sentences in education.

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Historic US study echoing coached for the classroom.

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Unveiling the mystique of a super learner

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Unveiling the mystique of a super learner

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Revelations! Unveiling the mystique of a super learner

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Information on pupil premium funding, how school leaders can use it effectively and pupil premium strategy statements.

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It is well established that economic disadvantage can negatively influence children's learning in a variety of ways and cause disadvantaged children to fall behind their peers as they progress through education. In this section we consider attainment gaps between disadvantaged pupils and their non-disadvantaged peers, using eligibility for free school meals as a proxy for economic disadvantage. More details can be found in the box below.

Early years foundation stage

Disadvantaged pupils tend to have lower attainment than other pupils even on starting school and this gap widens as pupils progress through their education. Just under one-fifth (18 per cent) of pupils in reception year were eligible for free school meals in 2024 - unchanged from a decade earlier but higher than (the 14 per cent recorded) in recent years prior to the pandemic.

In 2024, the disadvantage gap among pupils aged 5 was 4.7 months, up slightly from 4.6 months in 2023 and considerably wider than in the five years prior to the pandemic.
Figure D1: The disadvantage gap for pupils in reception year widened in 2024 and remains well above levels in recent years prior to the pandemic
How do we measure the disadvantage gap?

For pupils in reception year, we define disadvantage as being currently recorded as eligible for free school meals (FSM) in the National Pupil Database (NPD), and for older pupils, being FSM registered at any point in the previous six years.

At each key stage, we order pupils by their attainment results and use this to assign them a rank. We then calculate the average rank of non-disadvantaged and disadvantaged pupil groups and convert the difference between the two (known as the 'mean rank difference') into a months of learning gap, using a scalar. This months gap measure is not precise but gives an indication of how far disadvantaged pupils lag behind their peers.

The free school meal data available in the 16-19 phase is not reliable, so we define disadvantage status based on whether students had been eligible for free school meals at any point in the last 6 years, as recorded at the end of key stage 4. Rather than a mean rank approach, we instead calculate a total point score across students best three qualifications taken in the 16-19 phase. Our disadvantage gap (expressed in A level grades to aid interpretation, but all qualifications are included) is defined as the mean of this total point score amongst disadvantaged students, subtracted from the mean for non-disadvantaged students.

Primary school

By the end of primary school, 30 per cent of pupils are identified as being disadvantaged. In 2024, the attainment gap in year 6 between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers narrowed to 10 months. This is a reduction of 0.3 months since 2023, the first drop in the gap since 2018. However, this remains substantially larger than pre-pandemic levels, when it was just 9.2 months at its smallest, in 2018.
Figure D2: The disadvantage gap at the end of primary school narrowed in 2024 but remains substantially wider than before the pandemic
Secondary school

By the time pupils finish secondary school, one in four are classified as disadvantaged, a lower percentage than at the end of primary school. This decline occurs because, as children grow older, their parents are more likely to find employment and surpass the income limit required for free school meal eligibility.

For the secondary phase, the disadvantage gap narrowed by 0.2 months since 2023, to 19.1 months in 2024. However, it remains a full month wider than pre-pandemic levels. Our recent research on the drivers of the gap show that the increase since 2019 can be entirely explained by the higher levels of absence among disadvantaged pupils.
Figure D3: The disadvantage gap in GCSE English and maths narrowed in 2024 but, as at key stage 2, remains substantially wider than before the pandemic[1]
16-19 education

In the 16-19 phase, around a fifth of students are defined as disadvantaged based on their free school meal status at the end of key stage 4. This proportion is slightly lower than in earlier phases mainly because, although participation in education or training is compulsory until age 18, around 10 per cent of 16 and 17 year olds do not participate (see note on participation below).

Prior to the pandemic, the 16-19 disadvantage gap was relatively stable and closed slightly in 2019. However, the gap was still over three grades across students' best three qualifications. The wider gap seen in 2022 was likely to have been driven by differences in grading between qualification types, so the narrowing observed in 2023 will be partly explained by the return to usual grading. However, the 16-19 disadvantage gap widened again in 2024 and now stands at 3.3 grades - the widest seen in a year with normal grading arrangements since 2018.
Figure D4: The 16-19 disadvantage gap across students' best three qualifications widened between 2023 and 2024, and remains at pre-pandemic levels[2]
What is happening to the post-16 participation gap?

The proportion of students that were not studying towards any substantial qualifications or an apprenticeship at the beginning of year 12 has been consistently higher for disadvantaged students than it has for non-disadvantaged students. Furthermore, this participation gap has widened in recent years such that for those finishing their GCSEs in 2022 (finishing a two year post 16 study programme in 2024), 21.9 per cent of disadvantaged students had no substantial education activity at the beginning of year 12, compared to 9.3 per cent of non-disadvantaged students.

The widening disadvantage participation gap in recent years, from 10.6 percentage points in 2020 to 12.5 percentage points in 2022, is concerning. Furthermore, an increasing number of disadvantaged students missing from education, and therefore our attainment measures, means we may be understating the true size of the post 16 disadvantage attainment gap.
Figure D5: The year 12 participation gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students has widened in recent years
When considering gaps within level 3 qualification types we find that disadvantage gaps have narrowed slightly since 2022 for A levels, applied general and other level 3 qualifications, but gaps remain higher than pre-pandemic levels. This longer-term increase was most significant in applied general qualifications, which saw an increase in the disadvantage gap of 0.11 grades since 2019.

Notably, level 3 qualification type gaps have narrowed in the last year while the overall disadvantage gap has widened. This is explained by changes in who is entering these qualifications. Specifically, disadvantaged students are under-represented amongst those taking A levels, and over-represented amongst those studying at level 2 or below post 16. Entry patterns between qualification types by disadvantage status also change year on year. Qualification type disadvantage gaps therefore provide insight into how far disadvantaged students were behind others that entered the same qualifications as them - but does not reflect the overall trend in disadvantage gaps for all students.
Figure D6: Disadvantage gaps by 16-19 qualification have narrowed slightly since 2023 but remain wider than they were prior to the pandemic[1]
Adjusting our headline measures for the impact of Universal Credit

For the first time, our headline measure of the disadvantage gap at key stage 2 and key stage 4 is directly affected by Universal Credit (UC) protections. This changes the composition of students we identify as disadvantaged - see our Methodology section for further details. We know that some of the pupils identified as disadvantaged in 2024 are only eligible due to these protections and would have been classified as non-disadvantaged in previous years. But how many are there of these 'protected' pupils and what are the implications for the size of gap?

Whilst we can't calculate this directly, we can infer from earlier years. Specifically, we can estimate the size of the group that would have been protected at the end of key stage 2 and key stage 4 in the earlier years of 2019, 2022 and 2023, had the UC protections been in place at the time.

To calculate the number of additionally protected pupils, we create a new 'FSM7' definition of disadvantage and compare this to our headline measure in each of these years based on 'FSM6'. We use FSM7 because this roughly simulates the extra year when some of the 2024 cohort was protected from losing free school meals.

We find that in each of the earlier years, fewer than are additionally identified as disadvantaged due to simulated UC protections, in both key stage 2 and in key stage 4. As a result, the gap increased by no more than by 0.03 months in any year for KS2 and changed by no more than 0.02 months for any year in KS4.

This gives us confidence that our 2024 gap analysis is also likely to be minimally affected by UC protections. In the coming year, we plan to devise a new gap measure that addresses this issue on a more ongoing basis, and to consider the implications of the government's recent announcements on broadening the population of pupils entitled to free school meals.

In our previous reports we have shown not only that disadvantaged pupils tend to do worse than their peers but that those who are disadvantaged for the longest duration do worst of all.

Our research has also shown that pupils have been increasingly experiencing long-term (or persistent) disadvantage and this trend emerged even prior to the pandemic and cost of living crisis. This is concerning and consistent with wider evidence of rising child poverty.

Here we consider attainment gaps for persistently disadvantaged pupils, which we define as pupils who are eligible for free school meals (FSM) for 80 per cent or more of their school lives (see methodology page for details). As there have been significant changes to the composition of this group, due to the UC protections mentioned previously, we no longer show a time series for this group. We do show the results for 2024, as at this stage, the figure for a single year is still able to give a sense of the overall scale of the gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils.

Primary and secondary school

By the end of primary school, 19 per cent of pupils are identified as persistently disadvantaged. These pupils represent 62 per cent of all disadvantaged pupils. The persistent disadvantage gap at the end of KS2 in 2024 was 11 months. Pupils who are persistently disadvantaged were one month further behind other disadvantaged pupils. By the end of secondary school, 13 per cent of students are persistently disadvantaged-51 per cent of all disadvantaged students. The persistent disadvantage gap at the end of KS4 was 22.4 months, and these students were over three months further behind other disadvantaged students.
Figure D7: Persistently disadvantaged pupils are almost one year behind by the end of primary school and almost two years behind by the end of secondary school
16-19 education

The 16-19 persistent disadvantage gap is also affected by UC protections. However, the effect will be less pronounced than in pre-16 measures, as the free school meal data we use post-16 is on a two or three year lag, meaning a smaller proportion of years are affected.

In 2024, around 9 per cent of students at the end of 16-19 study were flagged as persistently disadvantaged. This percentage is much smaller than in earlier phases, demonstrating that it is the most disadvantaged students who are more likely to drop out of education at the crucial transition point between key stage 4 and key stage 5.
Figure D8: The persistent disadvantage gap in 16-19 education narrowed in 2023 and is now the smallest recorded gap since the start of our time series in 2017
Disadvantage gaps by qualification type are based on average points per qualification rather than total points over students' best three qualifications.

The January census is the record we use for determining a pupil's disadvantage status based on having ever been recorded as eligible for FSM in the previous 6 years, known as 'FSM6'.

Strictly the period of protections began in April 2018 and given that we use the following January census to determine a pupil's recorded FSM eligibility, the actual period affected by UC protections for the 2024 cohort is just under one year. This means our estimates of the effects of the protections are an upper bound.

CAGs and TAGs refer to alternative grading approaches used during the COVID-19 pandemic years of 2019/20 and 2020/21 (respectively) when exams were cancelled and grades were based on centre and teacher assessments.

During the pandemic grades increased across all subjects under centre and teacher assessed grades, but in the 16-19 phase, A level grades increased at a greater rate than other level 3 qualifications. As disadvantaged students were less likely to enter A levels, this was one of the reasons the gap widened. In 2022, grade boundaries were set at a midpoint between 2021 and 2019 levels, so some of the differences in results between qualification types were preserved.

Due to change in definitions by the Department for Education, the cohorts of students finishing 16-19 study in 2020 and 2021 were not directly comparable, so we have not shown the disadvantage gap for these years on our chart.
Foreword & EXECUTIVE SUMMARY gender GeoGraphic Disadvantage Gaps Disadvantage

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Disadvantage - Education Policy Institute

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It is well established that economic disadvantage can negatively influence children's learning in a variety of ways and cause disadvantaged children to fall behind their peers as they progress through education. In this section we consider attainment gaps between disadvantaged...Read more Disadvantage ›

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Pre-pandemic but a good listen nontheless.

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Analysis - The Pupil Premium - BBC Sounds

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Has extra funding through the pupil premium helped poorer children succeed at school?

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Becky Allen the Pupil Premium is not working

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Becky Allen the Pupil Premium is not working

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Becky Allen's musings on education policy

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On Saturday 8th September 2018 I gave a talk to researchED London about the pupil premium. It was too long for my 40-minute slot, and the written version is similarly far too long for one post. So I am posting my argument in three parts [pt II and pt III will be posted in a day or so].
Every education researcher I have met shares a desire to work out how we can support students from disadvantaged backgrounds as they navigate the education system. I wrote my PhD thesis about why school admissions help middle class families get ahead. No politician is crazy enough to do anything about that; but they have been brave enough to put their money where their mouth is, using cash to try to close the attainment gap. This series of blog posts explains why I think the pupil premium hasn't worked and why it diverts the education system away from things that might work somewhat better. I suggest it is time to re-focus our energies on constructing classrooms that give the greatest chance of success to those most likely to fall behind.

Money, money, money...

We think about attaching money to free school meal students as a Coalition policy, but the decision to substantially increase the amount going to schools serving disadvantaged communities came during the earlier Labour Government. The charts below come from an IFS paper that shows how increases in funding were tilted towards more disadvantaged schools from 1999 onwards. The subsequent 'pupil premium' (currently £1,320 for primary and £935 for secondary pupils) really was just the icing on the cake.

However, the icing on the cake turned out to have a slightly bitter taste, for it came with pretty onerous expenditure and reporting requirements:

1. The money must be spent on pupil premium students, and not simply placed into the general expenditure bucket

2. Schools must develop and publish a strategy for spending the money

3. Governors and Ofsted must check that the strategy is sound and that the school tracks the progress of the pupil premium students to show they are closing the attainment gap

The pupil premium does not target our lowest income students

Using school free school meal eligibility as an element in a school funding formula is a perfectly fine idea, but translating this into a hypothecated grant attached to an actual child makes no sense. The first reason why is that free school meals eligibility does not identify the poorest children in our schools. This was well known by researchers at the time the pupil premium was introduced thanks to a paper by Hobbs and Vignoles that showed a large proportion of free school meal eligible children (between 50% and 75%) were not in the lowest income households (see chart below from their paper). One reason why is that the very act of receiving the means-tested benefits and tax credits that in turn entitle the child to free school meals raises their household income above the 'working poor'.

Poverty is a poor proxy for educational and social disadvantage

Even if free school meal eligibility perfectly captured our poorest children, it would still make little sense to direct resources to these children since poverty is a poor proxy for the thing that teachers and schools care about: the educational and social disadvantage of families. Children who come from households who are time-poor and haven't themselves experienced success at school often do need far more support to succeed at school, not least because:

Their household financial and time investment in their child's education is frequently lower

Their child's engagement in school and motivation could be lower

The child's cognitive function might lead them to struggle (of which more in part 3)

These are social, rather than income, characteristics of the family.

Pupil premium students do not have homogeneous needs

There are pupil premium students who experience difficulties with attendance and behaviour; there are pupil premium students who do not. There are non-pupil premium students who experience difficulties with attendance and behaviour; there are those who do not. Categorising students as a means of allocating resources in schools is very sensible, if done along educationally meaningful lines (e.g. the group who do not read at home with their parents; the group who cannot write fluently; the group who are frequently late to school). Categorising students as pupil premium or not is a bizarre way to make decisions about who gets access to scarce resources in schools.

Yes, there are mean average differences by pupil premium status in attendance, behaviour and attainment. However, the group means mask the extent to which pupil premium students are almost as different from each other than they are from the non-pupil premium group of students. The DfE chart below highlights this nicely.

In his book, Factfulness, the great, late Hans Rosling implores us not to overuse this type of analysis of group mean averages to make inferences about the world. He explains that 'gap stories' are almost always a gross over-simplification. They encourage us to stereotype groups of people who are not as dissimilar to others as the mean average would have us believe.

Why do we like these 'gap stories'? We like them because we humans like the pattern forming that group analysis facilitates, and having formed the gap story, we are then naturally drawn to thinking of pupil cases that conform to the stereotypes.

Your school's gap depends on your non-PP demographic

I've explained how the pupil premium group in schools do not have a homogeneous background and set of needs. Students not eligible for the pupil premium are even more diverse.

When we ask schools to monitor and report their pupil premium attainment gap, the size of the gap is largely a function of the demographic make-up of the non-pupil premium students at the school. Non-pupil premium students include the children of bus drivers and bankers. It is harder to 'close the gap' if yours are the latter. Many schools that boast a 'zero' gap (as did one where I was once a governor) simply recruit all their pupils from one housing estate where all the residents are equally financial stretched and socially struggling, though some are not free school meal eligible. Schools that serve truly diverse communities are always going to struggle on this kind of accountability metric.

Tracking whether or not 'the gap' has closed over time is largely meaningless, even at the national level

There are dozens of published attainment gap charts out there, all vaguely showing the same thing: the national attainment gap isn't closing, or it isn't closing that much. None of them are worth dwelling on too much since the difference between average FSM and non-FSM attainment is very sensitive to two things that are entirely unrelated to what students know:

1. We regularly change the tests and other assessments that we bundle into attainment measures at age 5, 7, 11 and 16. This includes everything from excluding qualifications, changing coursework or teacher assessment mix, to rescaling the mapping of GCSE grades to numerical values. Generally speaking, changes that disproportionately benefit higher attaining students, widen the gap.

2. The group of students labelled as pupil premium at any point in time is affected by the economic cycle, by changes in benefit entitlements and by changes to the list of benefits that attract free school meals. For example, recessions tend to close the gap because they temporarily bring children onto free school meals who have parents more attached to the labour market.

It is also worth noting that FSM eligibility falls continuously from age 4 onwards as parents gradually choose (or are forced) to return to the labour market. This means comparisons of FSP, KS1, KS2 and KS4 gaps aren't interesting.

Don't mind your own school gap

Your school's attainment gap, whether compared with other schools, compared with your own school over time, or compared across Key Stages, cannot tell you the things you might think it can, for all the reasons listed above.

Moreover, it isn't possible for a school to conduct the impact analysis required by DfE and Ofsted to 'prove' that their pupil premium strategy is working for all the usual reasons. Sample sizes in schools are usually far too small to make any meaningful inferences about the impact of expenditure, and no school ever gets to see the counterfactual (what would have happened without the money).

What's coming up...

Part II explains how hypothecation drives short-term, interventionist behaviour

Part III asks whether within-classroom inequalities can ever be closed
(Punchline for the nervous... No, I don't think the pupil premium should be removed. I suggest it should be rolled into general school funding.)

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The pupil premium is not working (part I): Do not measure attainment gaps

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On Saturday 8th September 2018 I gave a talk to researchED London about the pupil premium. It was too long for my 40-minute slot, and the written version is similarly far too long for one post. So I am posting my argument in three parts [pt II and pt III will be posted in a...

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If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk . Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

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Supporting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils

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If you use assistive technology (such as a screen reader) and need a version of this document in a more accessible format, please email alternative.formats@education.gov.uk . Please tell us what format you need. It will help us if you say what assistive technology you use.

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Writing your strategy with engagement in mind

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Writing your strategy with engagement in mind

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How to write your 2024/25 Pupil Premium strategy with engagement in…

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Inflated praise and its impact on pupils from low-income families

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Inflated praise and its impact on pupils from low-income families

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“You did incredibly well!”: teachers’ inflated praise can make children from low-SES backgrounds seem less smart (but more hardworking) - npj Science of Learning

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npj Science of Learning - “You did incredibly well!”: teachers’ inflated praise can make children from low-SES backgrounds seem less smart (but more hardworking)

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Phil Stock uncovers how we improved outcomes for our disadvantaged pupils

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Unconscious bias and its impact on teacher assessment

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Unconscious bias and its impact on teacher assessment

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How to set up an internal alternative provision

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How to set up an internal alternative provision

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How to set up an Internal Alternative Provision — Close the Gaps

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This is some thoughts around what makes internal alternative provisions successful. Key questions around IAP’s and why we need internal alternative provisions.

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Socioeconomic disadvantage and the attainment gap

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Review of the relationship between socioeconomic disadvantage and the attainment gap in the English education system

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EPI forgotten third rapid evidence review

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EPI forgotten third rapid evidence review

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Leadership in the early years: using evidence-based tools to support…

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Leadership in the early years: using evidence-based tools to support quality improvement

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Back-and-forth exchanges boost Back-and-forth exchanges boost children's brain response to language

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Back-and-forth exchanges boost Back-and-forth exchanges boost children's brain response to language

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MIT News | Massachusetts Institute of Technology

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A landmark 1995 study found that children from higher-income families hear about 30 million more words during their first three years of life than children from lower-income families. This "30-million-word gap" correlates with significant differences in tests of vocabulary, language development, and reading comprehension.

MIT cognitive scientists have now found that conversation between an adult and a child appears to change the child's brain, and that this back-and-forth conversation is actually more critical to language development than the word gap. In a study of children between the ages of 4 and 6, they found that differences in the number of "conversational turns" accounted for a large portion of the differences in brain physiology and language skills that they found among the children. This finding applied to children regardless of parental income or education.

The findings suggest that parents can have considerable influence over their children's language and brain development by simply engaging them in conversation, the researchers say.

"The important thing is not just to talk to your child, but to talk with your child. It's not just about dumping language into your child's brain, but to actually carry on a conversation with them," says Rachel Romeo, a graduate student at Harvard and MIT and the lead author of the paper, which appears in the Feb. 14 online edition of Psychological Science.

Using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), the researchers identified differences in the brain's response to language that correlated with the number of conversational turns. In children who experienced more conversation, Broca's area, a part of the brain involved in speech production and language processing, was much more active while they listened to stories. This brain activation then predicted children's scores on language assessments, fully explaining the income-related differences in children's language skills.

"The really novel thing about our paper is that it provides the first evidence that family conversation at home is associated with brain development in children. It's almost magical how parental conversation appears to influence the biological growth of the brain," says John Gabrieli, the Grover M. Hermann Professor in Health Sciences and Technology, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences, a member of MIT's McGovern Institute for Brain Research, and the senior author of the study.
Beyond the word gap
Before this study, little was known about how the "word gap" might translate into differences in the brain. The MIT team set out to find these differences by comparing the brain scans of children from different socioeconomic backgrounds.

As part of the study, the researchers used a system called Language Environment Analysis (LENA) to record every word spoken or heard by each child. Parents who agreed to have their children participate in the study were told to have their children wear the recorder for two days, from the time they woke up until they went to bed.

The recordings were then analyzed by a computer program that yielded three measurements: the number of words spoken by the child, the number of words spoken to the child, and the number of times that the child and an adult took a "conversational turn" - a back-and-forth exchange initiated by either one.

The researchers found that the number of conversational turns correlated strongly with the children's scores on standardized tests of language skill, including vocabulary, grammar, and verbal reasoning. The number of conversational turns also correlated with more activity in Broca's area, when the children listened to stories while inside an fMRI scanner.

These correlations were much stronger than those between the number of words heard and language scores, and between the number of words heard and activity in Broca's area.

This result aligns with other recent findings, Romeo says, "but there's still a popular notion that there's this 30-million-word gap, and we need to dump words into these kids - just talk to them all day long, or maybe sit them in front of a TV that will talk to them. However, the brain data show that it really seems to be this interactive dialogue that is more strongly related to neural processing."

The researchers believe interactive conversation gives children more of an opportunity to practice their communication skills, including the ability to understand what another person is trying to say and to respond in an appropriate way.

While children from higher-income families were exposed to more language on average, children from lower-income families who experienced a high number of conversational turns had language skills and Broca's area brain activity similar to those of children who came from higher-income families.

"In our analysis, the conversational turn-taking seems like the thing that makes a difference, regardless of socioeconomic status. Such turn-taking occurs more often in families from a higher socioeconomic status, but children coming from families with lesser income or parental education showed the same benefits from conversational turn-taking," Gabrieli says.
Taking action
The researchers hope their findings will encourage parents to engage their young children in more conversation. Although this study was done in children age 4 to 6, this type of turn-taking can also be done with much younger children, by making sounds back and forth or making faces, the researchers say.

"One of the things we're excited about is that it feels like a relatively actionable thing because it's specific. That doesn't mean it's easy for less educated families, under greater economic stress, to have more conversation with their child. But at the same time, it's a targeted, specific action, and there may be ways to promote or encourage that," Gabrieli says.

Roberta Golinkoff, a professor of education at the University of Delaware School of Education, says the new study presents an important finding that adds to the evidence that it's not just the number of words children hear that is significant for their language development.

"You can talk to a child until you're blue in the face, but if you're not engaging with the child and having a conversational duet about what the child is interested in, you're not going to give the child the language processing skills that they need," says Golinkoff, who was not involved in the study. "If you can get the child to participate, not just listen, that will allow the child to have a better language outcome."

The MIT researchers now hope to study the effects of possible interventions that incorporate more conversation into young children's lives. These could include technological assistance, such as computer programs that can converse or electronic reminders to parents to engage their children in conversation.

The research was funded by the Walton Family Foundation, the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, a Harvard Mind Brain Behavior Grant, and a gift from David Pun Chan.

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Back-and-forth exchanges boost children's brain response to language

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MIT cognitive scientists have found that engaging children in conversation is more critical to their language development than the number of words they hear early in life. In a study of children 4 to 6, they found differences in the number of "conversational turns" accounted for much of the differences in language skills that they found among the children.

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Service Pupils in Schools: Non-statutory guidance

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This publication provides non-statutory guidance from the Department for Education and the Ministry of Defence. It has been produced to help state-funded schools and local authorities in England to understand and address the needs of Service pupils in schools[footnote 1] (reception to year 11).

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Deepening knowledge through vocabulary learning

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Deepening knowledge through vocabulary learning

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Deepening knowledge through vocabulary learning

Effective vocabulary instruction: The underlying reasoning and research

Isabel L Beck and Margaret G McKeown

With the publisher's permission, sections of this article have been taken from Beck and McKeown (Beck et al., 2007).

Vocabulary, particularly vocabulary teaching and learning, has been a topic that we have studied for over 25 years. In this article, we provide some of the research and theory that eventually coalesced into our books, Bringing Words to Life (Beck et al., 2013) .

In the early 1980s, our understanding of several aspects of word knowledge commingled to stimulate our academic interest in vocabulary, eventually becoming integral to our principles of vocabulary learning. One aspect emerged from Curtis's(Curtis et al., 1987) findings from investigations of college students' vocabulary knowledge. Her research indicated that high-vocabulary students not only knew more words than those with lower vocabularies, but they also knew more about those words. Lower-vocabulary students tended to define words in terms of a specific context. For example, in the case of surveillance, lower-vocabulary people said something along the lines of 'that's what the police do', whereas high-vocabulary individuals were more likely to talk about surveillance in terms of 'watching'. As such, high-vocabulary people seemed better able to define words in a generalised and decontextualised way.

Alongside this, we were reminded that, as long ago as 1942, Cronbach presented descriptions of the knowledge and abilities involved in knowing a word, with generalisation beingthe ability to define a word; application the ability to select or recognise situations appropriate to a word; breadth theknowledge of multiple meanings; precision the ability to apply a term correctly to all situations and to recognise inappropriate use; and availability the actual use of a word in thinking and discourse.

Our understanding of the important role of decoding-automaticity (sometimes referred to as efficiency) in comprehension prompted us to reason that word meaning efficiency was similarly important for comprehension.

The need for fast access to one's representation of words in memory arises because comprehension is a complex process, in which several components vie for attention ((Beck and Carpenter, 1986); (Perfetti, 1985)). Reducing attention on some components - in the case at hand, lexical search (the definition of a word) - may free attention to deal with other components, in particular the meaning of the ideas represented by words. With lexical access in mind, we included in our instructional design frequent encounters and thoughtful activities with target words, so that students had opportunities to develop fast access to strong representations of word meanings.

Our approach

The approach to vocabulary instruction we initially developed was designed for use in classroom research that we undertook. It was aimed at developing flexible and multi-faceted representations of target words. Initially, we called such vocabulary instruction 'rich', but along the way, we changed the label to 'robust' instruction, as it seemed that this label captured our intention better. Below, we present the full range of components of robust instruction.

Introduce words through explanations in everyday connected language, rather than dictionary definitions

As we developed the instruction for our first study, we were quite dissatisfied with dictionary definitions for introducing word meanings to intermediate-grade students. We began to develop our own informal ways to explain the meanings, which we thought would be clearer and more helpful. This was the seed of our notion of student-friendly explanations. We became familiar with research showing that definitions are not effective for students ((Miller and Gildea, 1985) and have carried out research developing our notions of explanatory definitions more systematically (McKeown, 1993).

Provide several contexts in which the word can be used

Several sources of evidence demonstrated to us the need to design into the instruction multiple and varied contexts for each word. One source was Curtis's (Curtis et al., 1987) finding described above. Another was Werner and Kaplan's classic study (Werner and Kaplan, 1952), showing that learners often imported features of the context into their developing understanding of an unfamiliar word. We found that, as former teachers, these sets of findings struck a chord of memory about students tending to stick to the context in which a word had been initially introduced. Thus, in the instruction we developed, multiple contexts were an important keystone.

Get students to interact with word meanings right away

A good explanation of word meaning and several contexts can provide a strong idea of a word's meaning, but it is still static information. Towards developing deep understanding, a student needs to interact with word information in some way. This perspective connects with currents theories of learning, which stress the active nature of successful learning, as well as with conceptions about levels of word knowledge. We implemented the notion of interaction with word meaning by providing quick activities with the words as soon as their meanings were introduced. For example, after encountering an explanation for commotion, students might be asked, 'Would there more likely be a commotion on the playground or in the library?' and then asked to explain 'why'.

Develop activities that require students to process the meanings of words in deep and thoughtful ways

Here, we reasonedthat engaging students in simple associative tasks, such as matching a word with a synonym or definition, required only surface-level mental activity and would bring about minimal learning results. Our thinking was related to the notion that lower levels of mental effort would produce lower levels of knowledge. Since our goal was that words be known deeply and flexibly enough to enhance higher-level verbal tasks, we needed to develop instruction that requireddeep processing. All this led us to arrange instruction that required students to think about words and their meanings, identify and explain appropriate uses, create appropriate contexts and engage in various other reflectiveand analytical activities.

Provide examples, situations and questions that are interesting

In the course of looking at commercial vocabulary-instructional materials, we noted that most examples were obvious and ordinary. A prime example was the context sentence provided for quarrel: The teacher told the boys to stop quarrelling. Note that it was an obvious protagonist (the teacher) and obvious antagonists (boys). It is of some irony that, in trying to provide students with the building blocks of language, there wasn't much of an attempt to use engaging examples or present novel contexts. Consider an alternative such as: Dale's sister got tired of quarrelling with him about not using her CDs, so she set up an alarm system around her CD collection.

Provide many encounters with target words

The importance of repetition in learning has a long history of research, and we adhered to that literature by providing many encounters for target words. We included this feature in our instruction, beginning in 1980. Subsequently, reviews by Stahl and Fairbanks (Stahl and Fairbanks, 1986) and Mezynski (Mezynski, 1983) identified frequency of encounters as one component that differentiated successful vocabulary instruction.

Word Wizard gimmick

We considered that if students' learning of their new vocabulary was simply a classroom activity, their understanding and use of the words could be limited to a school context, and the words would be less likely to become a permanent part of their vocabulary repertoires. So, a goal of instruction was to move students' learning beyond the classroom to increase the encounters with words and to enhance the decontextualisation of the words. To encourage outside learning, we developed a gimmick called Word Wizard, in which students could earn points by reporting having seen, heard or used target words outside of class.

Research

The features described above were incorporated into three studies. Extensive research articles are available about the results. Here, we briefly note that in an initial study and a replication ((Beck et al., 1982); (McKeown et al., 1983)), we focused on the assessment of three aspects of verbal skill: a) accurate knowledge of word meanings; b) accessibility of word meanings during semantic processing; and c) reading comprehension.

In the initial and replication studies, experimental children significantly outperformed control children on word knowledge, as measured on multiple-choice tests, and accessibility of word meanings. Accessibility of word meanings was measured by children's reaction time on a word-categorisation task; children were shown a word on a screen and asked to press a 'yes' or 'no' button to indicate whether the word was, for example, 'a person'. Experimental children's performance on the accessibility task was also faster for instructed words compared to uninstructed words.The results of the task suggest that the words were learned well enough to be readily available for complex processing.The results of comprehension in the replication study were that recall of a story containing taught words was superior to that of a story with uninstructed words and to that of children who had not received the instruction. From these two studies, we concluded that instruction that improved accurate word knowledge and speed of semantic access could also influence reading comprehension.

A third study was designed to investigate the role of features of the instruction used in the first two studies: frequency (whether children had four or 12 encounters with each target word); type of instruction ('robust' or traditional, with only definitions and synonyms provided), and whether the 'Word Wizard' extension activity was included or not. The results of this study are covered in detail in the online version of this article, but we found that whilst even a few - in this case, four - encounters with a word within traditional instructional activities will produce some limited results, a greater number of encounters with words is generally more helpful towards a variety of vocabulary learning goals. Only robust instruction, meanwhile, and only in the high-encounter condition, was powerful enough to affect comprehension, and instructional conditions that encouraged extension beyond the classroom, by including use of the Word Wizard device, held advantage in making knowledge about the words more readily available for processing. To sum up succinctly, students need to wallow in words and their uses if they are to develop the kind of vocabulary repertoires that will serve them in school and, indeed, in life.

Making vocabulary stick

Jude Hunton

Education depends upon reading, and all reading depends upon vocabulary. With the help of Shireland Research School, I have designed an intervention to improve secondary-school-age children's vocabulary knowledge. I have taken as a lodestone for this endeavour ED Hirsch's well-known comment: 'Broad, shallow knowledge is the route to independence...' ((Hirsch, 1988), p.10). I have also been informed by the excellent Learning as a Generative Activity, which states that 'more generative practice tests... may lead to the best long term learning' ((Fiorella and Mayer, 2015), p. 111). Robert Bjork (Bjork, 2012) further explains that self-testing has a more powerful effect without cues or being primed.

The most influential text, however, is Bringing Words to Life (Beck et al., 2002). It provides robust and clear instructional methods for making vocabulary stick. One of the most powerful takeaways for me is: '[You need to acquire] 400 words a year to make a significant contribution to verbal functioning', which gives me a rough goal against which to measure.

There are also references to the ineffectiveness of dictionary work, which spoke to me as, when I was first head of English a long while ago, colleagues asked if we could 'finally' buy dictionary boxes. I agreed with pleasure. Years later, the dictionaries sit in boxes around the department, underused and of limited impact. Bringing Words to Life explains a better way to capture meaning for students than looking in a dictionary!

However, what gets educators particularly interested is the famous reference to 'tier 2 language', illustrated in Figure 1.

Tier 2 words are essentially 'more mature and precise' words for ideas that students already have. This is where Hirsch's 'shallow... to deep knowledge' idea is most helpful. The more tier 2 words a student has, the better equipped they are to read a range of texts.

Accordingly, I created a list of tier 2 words. I downloaded about 1,600 words from a US website named Flocabulary ( https://www.flocabulary.com). I then simply chopped out words I thought were too simplistic, created an Excel document and enabled it to randomly present different words in a form of spaced retrieval. If you so wish, you can download the list from my blog (t hespacebetweenclub.wordpress.com).

Through discussion and 'cold call', students will acquire working definitions of about ten words each lesson. I will next use a generative learning, which should take about 15 minutes of one lesson a week. Here are some examples: one activity is to challenge students to generate situations, contexts and examples, therefore integrating their new vocabulary. For example, How might a (1) cook (2) musician (3) basketball player (4) teacher show they are (1) versatile (2) expert (3) industrious (4) innovative?Or perhaps an even more demanding example of generative elaboration: Do people with privilege prosper? What might a meticulous person be vulnerable to?

Bringing Words to Life has a panoply of activities to help secure students' understanding and, therefore, boost vocabulary in the long term, the goal being that young people become increasingly confident readers and successful learners across the curriculum. I am particularly curious as to whether the tasks that are more demanding generatively have greater impact or stickiness. Through the project, which will launch in September 2018, I hope to explore the best ways to ensure vocabulary sticks.

Building vocabulary across a 3D curriculum

Clare Sealy

In building our curriculum, we sought to structure our curriculum so that key concepts and vocabulary were revisited and reinforced, making them unforgettable. As a result, we constructed a 3D curriculum where explicit links were made within subjects, across subjects and across years, with repetition of vocabulary at its heart.

Beck's work (Bjork, 2012) gave us strategies to reinforce vocabulary within a unit of work and, by dividing words into three tiers, helped us decide which words would have most impact. However, when thinking about teaching for long-term learning, we decided that the most important vocabulary sometimes straddled tiers 2 and 3. We've dubbed these '2.5' words. These are words that may begin as technical 'tier 3' words, but become appropriated and used in a looser way. For example, children may first encounter the word 'meander' as a tier 3 word in geography, when studying rivers, but then encounter it in English when it is used to describe someone's thoughts or journey. Reminding children of the 'tier 3' usage not only consolidates recollection of the technical use, but also aids comprehension of the looser tier 2 meaning.

We thought about where these opportunities may occur across the curriculum. There's no point in a teacher simply saying, 'remember when you studied rivers in geography?' and assuming that children will make the right links. Instead, they need to be explicit and go over the technical meaning, even if the original exposure to the word did not take place in their year group or subject. This has meant highlighting which vocabulary we want staff to reinforce. For example, consider the words 'tyrant', 'tyranny' and 'tyrannical'. Children first encounter 'tyrant' in the Early Years, learning about dinosaurs and Tyrannosaurus Rex. So when teaching about King John and the Magna Carta, teachers exploit this prior knowledge when describing an oppressive ruler as tyrannical. Later history lessons, studying Hitler, provide opportunities to revisit the idea of tyranny and remind ourselves of when we have encountered it previously. Each time we revisit a tier 3 word in a different setting, our understanding of it becomes denser - more solid and more nuanced.

It's not just about being clear about tier 3 vocabulary in other subjects, or tier 2 vocabulary in English, it's also about looking for ways in which we can take some of this vocabulary 'for a walk' across our 3D curriculum.

Breathing life into how we teach vocabulary in the primary classroom

Sonia Thompson

When the lexical challenge of the 2016 Key Stage 2 Statutory Reading test landed on primary schools' laps, we were confronted with the harsh reality that the teaching of vocabulary needed consistency. At St Matthew's Primary, a Church of England School in Nechells, Birmingham, we had always taught vocabulary reasonably well in English lessons and had actually done well in reading tests. Yet, within reading and other curriculum sessions, vocabulary teaching was, at best, ad hoc and sporadic.

On reflection, I recognised that I needed to develop our teachers' understanding of why we needed to teach vocabulary well. They also needed to understand the pedagogy and use the meta-language associated with robust vocabulary instruction. EDHirsch Jnr ((Hirsch Jr, 2003), p.16), in an article about comprehension, confirmed this reflection when he explained that overcoming the vocabulary deficit is a huge challenge, but the only way to do it is by 'providing an environment that accelerates the incidental of vocabulary'.

Further reading led me to Doug Lemov and colleagues' inspiring book, Reading Reconsidered(2016). His chapter advocating breadth and depth in vocabulary instruction made a number of references to Bringing Words to Life (Beck et al., 2013) . I quickly recognised that this was the book that I had been looking for - something that would afford our students clear and evidence-based vocabulary practices, as well as providing our teachers with 'a fuller understanding of the importance and joyfulness of interest in words'. ((Beck et al., 2013), p.xi).

In fact, it has contributed so much more. The impact is such that it has served as a conduit for helping us to define what is really meant by 'learning meanings of new words' ((Beck et al., 2008), p.1). Teachers had felt that they were doing this, but the book exposed that we were not, and then helped us to adopt:

a shared language when discussing how to robustly and explicitly teach word meaning, from Reception to Year 6

direct teaching activities, which were transferable across the curriculum.

Previously, we had addressed vocabulary as it came up. Now, teachers prepare the vocabulary to be taught in advance. All teachers now understand the 'tiers' of vocabulary and are clear about which tier needs to be taught when, why and how. Teachers are also more confident about developing student-friendly definitions and establishing follow-up activities, in order to embed the vocabulary learning.

Most importantly, all teachers understand that their efforts in delivering robust vocabulary instruction can advance students' access to the curriculum. In our Reception class, this has resulted in timetabled explicit vocabulary sessions, using linked stories and non-fiction texts. This has also served to increase our youngest students' background knowledge.

In doing this, the opportunities for our students to understand word meanings and to then go on to use them, as Beck et al. ((Beck et al., 2008), p.2) state, 'in service of reading comprehension and writing', has had noticeable results, and we are now well on our way to achieving the goal of breathing life into the way that we teach vocabulary.

References

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Deepening knowledge through vocabulary learning

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Deepening knowledge through vocabulary learning Effective vocabulary instruction: The underlying reasoning and research Isabel L Beck and Margaret G McKeown With the publisher's permission, sections of this article have been taken from Beck and McKeown (Beck et al., 2007). Vocabulary, particularly vocabulary teaching and learning, has been a topic that we have studied for over [...]

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Marc Rowland, Unity Research School

Over the last three years I have had the privilege of working with The Buckinghamshire Challenge, a collaborative with the objective of upskilling schools in the latest research and understanding and to support schools to undertake the cultural changes that will make the biggest differences to all pupils, but especially those who are vulnerable or disadvantaged.

Our handbook, published this month, shares evidence, insights and guidance drawn together through the project so far and seeks to empower school communities in this essential focus.

Disadvantage is dynamic and we know that disadvantage extends beyond those pupils eligible for Pupil Premium funding. The following extract draws attention to an often-asked question: how can we best address disadvantage of the low numbers of pupils we have who are eligible for the Pupil Premium?

Addressing educational disadvantage is not a problem. It is a privilege. It will need strong partnerships across our education community. This is true for everyone: selective or non-selective schools and their leaders. pastoral experts and curriculum leaders, Early Years practitioners and experienced secondary teachers, Early Career teachers and governors, local authority officers and external organisations. It will need the acceptance that we can do better, not because we are doing badly, but because the effectiveness of our schools is best measured by how our educationally disadvantaged pupils perform. That can be better.

Evidence from across the country highlights the importance of a number of principles and practices underpinning an effective response to addressing educational disadvantage in schools where low numbers of pupils are eligible for the Pupil Premium:

A good education, with the qualifications to show for it, can transform lives for the better. Conversely, young people who finish their studies without attaining the expected standards will struggle both in further study and the world of work. Education Endowment Foundation Attainment Gap Report

Getting the climate right through teacher agency, shared understanding, shared ambitions. Through building strong relationships, having high expectations. It may be even MORE important to be mindful of these issues where the majority of children are growing up in families with more stable, higher incomes.

* A risk of making presumptions about pupils' prior experiences, or the lives they are living may be higher. Some families may feel excluded if access to the other curriculum (formal and informal) is linked to social or financial capital. Be wary of social isolation of families. All school families, across the socio-economic spectrum, are part of efforts to ensure social inclusion.

* Ensuring that all staff, irrespective of roles, understand how low incomes impact on the school experience. Think of these families first, however few they may be, when making decisions or plans. See school life through the lens of low-income families, and those that may be less confident about having a voice in the school community. Where families may be less confident in advocating on behalf of their child, for many complex reasons, teachers and leaders need to advocate for the pupil.

* It is always important to remember that some families will always struggle to engage with school life. There are lots of complex, acute, or systemic reasons why this may be the case. It is NOT because those families are less well off. Avoid generalisations about families, or labelling pupils.

* That accurate assessment of need, based on the needs of individuals, provides useful information for teachers and leaders to ensure precise responses, rooted in early intervention. The earlier the intervention, the more likely pupils are to thrive in the school community. Strategies should focus on helping pupils be better learners. Assessments should help inform:

o Teaching and learning strategies
o Targeted academic support
o Personal development
o Pastoral care

* With more limited resources, working with other schools or agencies may be necessary around enrichment, pastoral care, expert input around key issues such as SEMH.

* Each are essential to ensure that disadvantaged pupils are experiencing meaningful success and thriving on a day-to-day basis. Be mindful, particularly with targeted academic support, about how pupils may perceive themselves, and how their peers may perceive them. Be wary of how families may perceive intervention. Always be clear and unequivocal about the why.

* Be wary of making presumption about prior knowledge, language and communication, friendships, learning behaviours, whether pupils are experiencing success in the classroom or wider school life. Pupils may well learn to mask and give the veneer of success, particularly around high performing peers. Ensure that disadvantaged pupils get at least equitable access to high quality, well trained, expert staff.

* Avoid targeted academic or pastoral support which is not aligned to the needs of pupils. This is particularly important when an adult may be an expert in a particular approach, but that approach is not tightly aligned with the needs of the pupil. This can be a risk with more limited finances in school.

* Evaluate the effectiveness of approaches based on the impact on pupils, not whether actions have taken place. Pupil and parent voice, about being included and experiencing success academically, and socially, is most helpful.

* Take care using percentages of pupils achieving a particular standard to measure success or otherwise. Ensure all assessment data, diagnostic and summative, is meaningful for teachers and leaders.

* See low pupil numbers as an opportunity, rather than a problem. Be an expert in pupils!

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Implementation matters: addressing disadvantage in schools with low...

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addressing disadvantage in schools with low numbers of pupils eligible for The Pupil Premium

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Pupil Premium and SEND: learning without labels

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Pupil Premium and SEND: learning without labels

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Pupil Premium and SEND: learning without labels

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Pupil Premium and SEND: learning without labels

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Model for tackling disadvantage - Rowland

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Model for tackling disadvantage - Rowland

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The active ingredients for addressing disadvantage

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Claire Stoneman's blog disadvantage section

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Claire Stoneman's blog disadvantage section

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It’s now official, with the election of a Labour government in the UK, oracy is now the Next Big Thing about to preoccupy schools in England. (England rather than the UK as a whole, because authori…

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Anti-Racism from Day 1

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Helping young children to think about race in the early years

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Helping young children to think about race in the early years

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Racism can present itself in different ways in a young child's life. A child may have direct or indirect experiences of racism, but the impact can be felt all the same.

For early years practitioners, it can be difficult to talk about race and racism, especially if you have never experienced it or talked about it yourself. Our Helping young children to think about race in the early years resource has been written by Dr Pamela Hamilton and Dr Bisi Showunmi, two Child Psychologists. Both have delivered anti-racism sessions for schools and local authorities, with the second author writing her thesis on race and identity development in school children.

The purpose of this booklet is to:

highlight the various ways that race and racism impact children in the early years

introduce the idea of racial socialisation and how it supports child development

start to think about ways to support racial socialisation in the early years

identify some ways to facilitate your journey in supporting racial socialisation in your setting.

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Helping young children to think about race in the early years

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Racism can present itself in different ways in a child’s life. This resource highlights the ways that race and racism can impact children in the early years.

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My chapter on improving universal provision

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This interactive publication is created with FlippingBook, a service for streaming PDFs online. No download, no waiting. Open and start reading right away!

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Ofsted training on inspecting attendance

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Ofsted training on inspecting attendance

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Inspecting attendance well | GoToStage.com

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**Please note** Training messages change as Ofsted policy and government policy develop. We have flagged where training messages or references are no longer current. For example, since the spring 2024 conference, schools no longer receive a single-word judgement for overall effectiveness. We will p

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Build, communicate, and deliver an attendance strategy.

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Understanding drivers for poor / inconsistent attendance - Rowland

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Understanding drivers for poor / inconsistent attendance - Rowland

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Short video on understanding the drivers for poor / inconsistent attendance at school.

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Three quarters of schools in England say poor attendance and low-reading levels are the biggest challenges affecting their socio-economically disadvantaged pupils' academic achievement.

This is according to analysis of Pupil Premium statements conducted by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and undertaken to support their suite of new resources to help schools use their Pupil Premium funding in the most effective ways.

Analysis of a representative sample of 300 schools' Pupil Premium strategy statements found that 75% cited attendance and 74% mentioned reading as the main barriers to attainment for their pupils eligible for Pupil Premium funding.

Supporting schools to tackle the factors hindering socio-economically disadvantaged pupils' progress has never been more important. The gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates remains stubbornly wide, and more families are falling below the poverty line as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. Just over 2.2 million pupils were eligible for Pupil Premium funding in January 2023, an increase of around 2% on the previous year.

The analysis also found that an overwhelming majority of schools are using education evidence to identify the best ways of supporting disadvantaged pupils in their school communities. Almost 9 out of 10 (88%) of the statements analysed referred to using EEF resources to guide their Pupil Premium spend, with greater take-up in schools with higher proportions of eligible pupils.

To further support schools, the EEF has published a suite of resources to help maximise the impact of Pupil Premium spending.

The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium is a comprehensive resource for school leaders looking to maximise the impact of their spending. It provides step-by-step, time-saving advice on how to develop and implement an effective Pupil Premium strategy.

The guide recommends a tiered approach, where schools focus their Pupil Premium resources on three areas:

High quality teaching, including approaches to support recruitment and retention.

Targeted academic support, such as small group or one to one tuition.

Wider strategies, including support for attendance and behaviour.

The resources include accessible guidance on using evidence to inform planning; quick links to high-quality research findings; and advice for governors on how to champion purposeful Pupil Premium spending in their context. They also bust common myths about the Pupil Premium.

Access the resources here.

Professor Becky Francis CBE, Chief Executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, said:

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three quarters of schools in england say poor attendance and low-reading levels are the biggest challenges affecting their socio-economically disadvantaged pupils’ academic achievement.  this is according to analysis of pupil premium statements conducted by the education endowment foundation (eef) and undertaken to support their suite of new resources to help schools use their pupil premium funding in the most effective ways.  analysis of a representative sample of 300 schools’ pupil premium strategy statements found that 75% cited attendance and 74% mentioned reading as the main barriers to attainment for their pupils eligible for pupil premium funding.  supporting schools to tackle the factors hindering socio-economically disadvantaged pupils’ progress has never been more important. the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their classmates remains stubbornly wide

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and more families are falling below the poverty line as a result of the cost-of-living crisis. just over 2.2 million pupils were eligible for pupil premium funding in january 2023

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an increase of around 2% on the previous year.  the analysis also found that an overwhelming majority of schools are using education evidence to identify the best ways of supporting disadvantaged pupils in their school communities. almost 9 out of 10 (88%) of the statements analysed referred to using eef resources to guide their pupil premium spend

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with greater take-up in schools with higher proportions of eligible pupils.  to further support schools

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the eef has published a suite of resources to help maximise the impact of pupil premium spending.  the eef guide to the pupil premium is a comprehensive resource for school leaders looking to maximise the impact of their spending. it provides step-by-step

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time-saving advice on how to develop and implement an effective pupil premium strategy.  the guide recommends a tiered approach

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where schools focus their pupil premium resources on three areas:  high quality teaching

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including approaches to support recruitment and retention.  targeted academic support

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such as small group or one to one tuition.  wider strategies

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including support for attendance and behaviour.  the resources include accessible guidance on using evidence to inform planning; quick links to high-quality research findings; and advice for governors on how to champion purposeful pupil premium spending in their context. they also bust common myths about the pupil premium. access the resources here .  professor becky francis cbe

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chief executive of the education endowment foundation

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said:  education inequality in england is entrenched

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and there is a stubborn link between socio-economic background and education outcomes. the pupil premium is one of the most important tools we have to address this. but getting the most out of this funding requires careful consideration and planning. we hope these resources can support school leaders in taking a structured

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evidence-informed approach – and that they help to improve outcomes for those children who need it most.

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Attendance and reading key barriers to disadvantaged pupils' progress...

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The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.

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Talking at a number of conferences recently I’ve suggested that we’ve got to stop reinventing the wheel and use research wisely. Research provides signposts towards what might work for…

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Parliamentary enquiry into disadvantage and persistent absence

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Parliamentary enquiry into disadvantage and persistent absence

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John Hopkins Best Evidence in Brief - parent communications & attendance

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John Hopkins Best Evidence in Brief - parent communications & attendance

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John Hopkins - Best Evidence in Brief - attendance

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John Hopkins - Best Evidence in Brief - attendance

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Attendance: Best Evidence in Brief with the CRRE at Johns Hopkins University | March 2025

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This webinar has been developed in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Reform in Education (CRRE) at Johns Hopkins University to support school leaders, teachers and practitioners in keeping up with the latest evidence-led approaches to school attendance.

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John Hopkins Best Evidence in Brief - parental engagement

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John Hopkins Best Evidence in Brief - parental engagement

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This webinar has been developed in collaboration with the Centre for Research and Reform in Education (CRRE) at Johns Hopkins University. It has been designed to support school leaders, teachers and practitioners in keeping up with the latest studies into evidence-led approaches to education from around the world.

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One of the very best pieces of work in communicating education research is the What Makes Great Teaching report from 2014. Around this time Professor Rob Coe (@ProfCoe), one of the report's central authors, was doing fabulous work sharing the key ideas from the report in various presentations. Here is one example:

As I shared recently on twitter, one particular slide from the presentation encapsulates a lot of the key thinking and is one I have found myself returning to and referring to countless times. In terms of getting ideas across, the 'poor proxies for learning' concept was something of a game-changer:

Of course it's always risky sharing isolated slides out of context - but I did so hoping to reel people into reading the full set if they'd missed it - that's what you always hope! However, it is obviously important to provide context. The key to this list is that it highlights some of the assumptions that are embedded in practices such as lesson observations and in some teachers' minds when lessons might appear to be going well - despite the fact that the underlying reality can't be seen: the learning that is actually happening is hidden in students' minds.

Poor Proxies is a powerful prompt to probe further to establish whether learning has happened rather than to assume. It's a reminder of the danger of focusing too much on task completion, immediate performance and behavioural compliance when they may or may not in themselves foster the learning you're seeking. It has major implications for the (dubious) validity of lesson observations as the presentation explores in some detail.

The next slide in the presentation is this:

Again, of course, this needs unpacking. How can you tell if students are thinking hard? The main thing is to make sure the tasks they are set require them to think hard; actually - to require them ALL to think hard. If you run through the Poor Proxies list, it's worth considering whether it's possible for students to do those things without thinking hard - and the answer is Yes!

This all links to various other ideas in Prof Coe's presentation and to ideas from Dan Willingham, Graham Nuthall, Dylan Wiliam and others - the need to think about thinking, 'hidden lives' and eliciting evidence of learning:

Coe's Poor Proxies have also helped me in thinking about the strategies that teachers might focus on to ensure that thinking hard is really happening across a classroom:

For more detail, Prof Coe helpfully shared this video to help this discussion. Here he is talking about his ideas in 2013, as he shared on twitter. It's a superb exploration of the nature of learning and the research that surrounds it:

And here is a full essay that explores the ideas further. The four recommendations are as relevant now as it was when it was published. :

Think hard about learning

Invest in effective professional development

Evaluate teaching quality

Evaluate impact of changes

Without question, Rob Coe is one of the greatest minds working in the field of educational research and it's wonderful to have this record of his insights. More recently, now working with Evidence Based Education, he has contributed to this superb report: Great Teaching Toolkit - again, well worth your time, exploring the detail.

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Poor Proxies for Learning. Powerful insights from Prof Coe:

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One of the very best pieces of work in communicating education research is the What Makes Great Teaching report from 2014. Around this time Professor Rob Coe (@ProfCoe), one of the report's central authors, was doing fabulous work sharing the key ideas from the report in various presentations.

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Addressing common challenges in classroom practice is the key to narrowing gaps

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Addressing common challenges in classroom practice is the key to narrowing gaps

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Room to improve: addressing common challenges in classroom practice is the key to narrowing gaps

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I observe a lot of teachers teaching in a lot of different contexts and it’s interesting to me to see how common the challenges are from one context to another. Teaching multiple people all a…

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This blog is inspired by another by Ruth Walker - E-coli and quality first teaching. I'm basically trying to say the same thing. In her brilliantly punchy post she uses an excellent analogy: when food hygiene is poor, the more vulnerable sectors of a population are most likely to suffer - the elderly and babies are more likely to get sick. But the solution doesn't lie in addressing their needs as sub-groups; it lies in addressing the core issue: poor food hygiene.

I think this is a very important idea. We have spent so long chasing rainbows with sub-group analysis; diving down rabbit holes; grasping at straws; playing whack-a-mole. The recent series of paradigm-busting blogs by Becky Allen have highlighted the folly of this in relation to chasing after Pupil Premium achievement through narrow interventions - largely because the probability of hitting the right students in ways that they need is pretty low.

A major part of the data delusion that has built up over recent years has been that each sub-group in a cohort should, more or less, achieve similar outcomes and that if there are GAPS - the GAPS MUST BE CLOSED. Usually this involves identifying some plausible causal link and then trying to make the lower achieving group catch up to the higher achieving group by intervening around that link. However, this is fraught with difficulty and data-wrongheadedness, too often driven by folk without enough mathematical confidence to apply the notion of 'statistical confidence' to their data.

Boys are not all the same. If boys underperform compared to girls 'Boy-friendly' strategies might not work for them all and may benefit the girls even more. Ethnic groups rarely have neatly homogenous learning characteristics that fit with definable interventions and often the group size is so small as to render the data useless. Every SEND student is different. Higher Prior Attainment students are not a distinct group and can be half your school. Then there is Odd Door/Even Door syndrome - the legendary cautionary tale once shared on David Didau's blog suggesting that spurious door number 'gaps' might be greater than say gender or PP/non-PP gaps: you can find all kinds of patterns and differences between groups even if the cause is entirely random.

And this is the main point: At some point 'intervention' really has to be simply 'teaching'. Given all the variables, uncertainties and unknowns, rather than chasing interventions, it is a far far better bet to focus on teaching everyone better. To spell out Ruth Walker's blog message, the reason why some students underachieve is likely to be a product of some deficit with the core teaching and learning process, not some special feature of it that just applies to them. It's just that - like babies and the elderly with e-coli - they might be more vulnerable and the symptoms will be more evident.

This might be about the overall pitch of your lessons, how well you specify the knowledge requirements of your curriculum, a behaviour management issue, the extent of your probing questioning, the amount of practice students get, how responsive you are in acting on information from your formative assessments, the quality of feedback students receive, the clarity of your explanations, your expectations in relation to recall and your habits around checking for understanding. If you address these areas, everyone benefits and, given the time constraints, focusing on a couple of these things seems like a good bet.

The message is simple: Try to chase gaps directly and you have no real idea what will happen...it's a false prize. Try to teach everyone better and then your sub-groups will do better - because they are part of everyone!

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To address underachieving groups, teach everyone better.

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This blog is inspired by another by Ruth Walker - E-coli and quality first teaching. I'm basically trying to say the same thing. In her brilliantly punchy post she uses an excellent analogy: when food hygiene is poor, the more vulnerable sectors of a population are most likely to suffer - the elderly and babies...

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ACE Programme - engaging young people of African and Caribbean Heritage in cricket

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ACE Programme - engaging young people of African and Caribbean Heritage in cricket

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The Ace Programme Charity - Supporting Diverse Talent from the Grassroots to the Elite

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The ACE Programme was launched by Surrey County Cricket Club in January 2020 in response to the decline of the black British professional players by 75%, and less than 1% of the recreational game. The ACE Programme was designed to engage young people of African and Caribbean Heritage and a talent search was launched.

In Black History Month of October 2020, following significant investment of £540,000 from Sport England, The ACE Programme Charity launched as an independent charity. This achievement followed in the success of an ACE Academy where 25 talented players became ACE scholars and the charity made strides to have a wider national impact.

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About Us HOW WE STARTED The ACE Programme was launched by Surrey County Cricket Club in January 2020 in response to the decline of the black British professional players by 75%, and less than 1% of the recreational game. The ACE Programme was designed to engage

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Mission44 - Driving greater diversity and inclusion within education

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Driving greater diversity and inclusion within education. Mission 44 is a Foundation launched by Lewis Hamilton to support, champion and empower young people from underrepresented groups, in the UK to succeed.

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Review of evidence on cog load and self regulation

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Review of evidence on cog load and self regulation

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Cognitive Load and Challenges in Self-regulation: An Introduction and Reflection on the Topical Collection

Abstract

The effort monitoring and regulation (EMR) model integrates self-regulated learning and cognitive load theory to examine how students monitor, regulate, and optimize effort during learning. Since its introduction in 2020, it has inspired research that explores how to correct learners' misinterpretations of effort and metacognitive biases and how instructional interventions can improve learning strategies. The current topical collection titled Cognitive Load: Challenges in Self-regulation includes seven empirical papers, two review papers, one meta-analysis, and a discussion paper. These contributions build on the EMR model by testing its assumptions, linking it to motivation, and refining our understanding of the basis of effort ratings in learning. Among other findings, the findings in the topical collection (1) show that feedback valence can affect participants' perceived task effort and their willingness to invest effort via feelings of challenge and threat, (2) provide the first evidence of far metacognitive transfer, and (3) propose a novel categorization of effort based on the underlying psychological sources when experiencing and allocating mental effort. In this editorial introduction, we summarize the topical collection papers, connect their findings to the EMR model, and finally reflect on how these novel insights can further develop the model.

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Introduction

The postulation that many contemporary issues in educational psychology stem from challenges in self-regulation and cognitive load gained momentum with a 2017 special issue on Learning and Instruction (de Bruin & van Merriënboer, 2017). Increased digitization in education, the exponential growth of information, the awareness that education should prepare individuals for lifelong learning, and several other reasons have convinced many educators and researchers that learners need to develop adequate self-regulated learning (SRL) skills (i.e., the skills that enable them to monitor and regulate the cognitive, metacognitive, motivational, and affective aspects of their learning) (Zimmerman, 1998). However, developing SRL skills often entails issues of cognitive load. That is, self-regulation of learning creates additional processing costs that can hamper the learning process and need to be dealt with (e.g., through scaffolding or by optimizing instructional design). Moreover, when monitoring and regulating their learning, learners might use the effort they experience during learning as a cue, possibly in an erroneous manner, e.g., by interpreting high effort as detrimental to learning in circumstances where effort is conducive to learning (Baars et al., 2020). These observations brought forth the EARLI and Jacobs Foundation-sponsored Emerging Field Group "Monitoring and Regulation of Effort," who jointly published the Effort Monitoring and Regulation (EMR) model (de Bruin et al., 2020; see Fig. 1). This model synthesizes theory on self-regulation of learning and cognitive load to provide a basis for future research and describes three main research questions that were promising to move the field forward: (1) How do students monitor effort? (2) How do students regulate effort? (3) How do we optimize CL on SRL tasks (during and after the primary task)? Fast forward to 2025, the EMR model has been cited over 140 times since February 2025 and has spurred new lines of research, including several of the papers that make up the current topical collection. Several research directions have emerged from studies building on the EMR model. First, some studies directly tested assumptions that can be derived from the model and its description, e.g., research on how learners can be helped to overcome their erroneous interpretations of perceived effort and can be supported by more self-regulated use of desirable difficulties (e.g., Janssen et al., 2023; Kramer et al., 2023; Onan et al., 2022, 2024a, 2024b). These studies have provided evidence for instructions that can shift learners' negative perceptions of effort and increase the use of the desirable difficulty "interleaved practice." Second, other empirical work, while not focused specifically on effort monitoring or regulation, draws on the EMR model to investigate related aspects of SRL and cognitive load theory (CLT) (Shin & Song, 2022; Wang et al., 2023a, 2023b). Third, a novel line of research explores how effort ratings function as metacognitive judgments, demonstrating their susceptibility to bias, much like other types of metacognitive assessments (e.g., Hoch et al., 2023; Scheiter et al., 2020). This research has led to the introduction of the BEVoCI methodology that helps expose heuristic cues that can bias metacognitive judgments in problem-solving tasks (Ackerman, 2023). Finally, emerging research that is surfacing and worth mentioning is research that brings together the EMR model on one hand and paradigms and theorization from motivational science on the other hand (Heitmann et al., 2022; Udvardi-Lakos et al., 2023). Whether learners are willing to invest effort and persist in investing effort are crucial concepts that are derived from the EMR model, but also link to central questions within motivational science, and it is encouraging to observe that interconnections between theory and paradigms across these subdomains of educational psychology are emerging.

The effort monitoring and regulation (EMR) model (de Bruin et al., 2020) incorporating the studies published in this topical collection according to their content

In the current topical collection, we advance our research on the EMR model in several ways, including direct testing of EMR-based assumptions, integration with motivational science, and improving understanding of the basis of effort ratings. In the following section, we first provide a summary of the topical collection papers, then connect this research to the EMR model, and finally reflect on how the EMR model can be deepened through these novel insights.

The Contributions of the Topical Collection

David, Biwer, Baars, Wijnia, Paas, and de Bruin

David et al. ( 2024) conducted a meta-analysis examining the relation between perceived mental effort, monitoring judgments, and learning outcomes. Results showed a moderate negative association between perceived mental effort and monitoring judgments, a strong positive association between monitoring judgments and learning outcomes, and a moderate indirect association between perceived mental effort and learning outcomes, fully mediated by learners' monitoring judgments. Surprisingly, none of these relations were significantly affected by the tested moderator variables, such as mental effort wording (active vs. other) and monitoring timing (prospective vs. concurrent), potentially due to the limited number of available studies per moderator category. Overall, their findings suggest that learners use their perceived mental effort as a cue for monitoring their learning, even though mental effort is only moderately related to actual learning outcomes. The authors emphasize the importance of teaching students how to accurately interpret their mental effort experience and suggest potential ways to accomplish this.

Van Gog, Janssen, Lucas, and Taheij

Van Gog et al. ( 2024) present four experiments on motivational influences on students' mental effort. They advocate for the utility of the biopsychological model of challenge and threat in understanding the roots of different types of self-reported mental effort, namely, effort invested, expected effort required, and willingness to invest effort. As an initial test of this approach, participants' motivational state was manipulated through performance feedback. Results revealed that negative performance feedback prompted higher expectations of future mental effort compared to positive or no feedback. This effect was explained by participants' levels of self-efficacy and feelings of threat. Furthermore, feedback valence also indirectly affected participants' perceived task effort and their willingness to invest effort via feelings of challenge and threat. This study demonstrates the importance of considering challenge, threat, and self-efficacy in understanding individual differences in effort monitoring and regulation.

Grund, Fries, Nückles, Renkl, and Roelle

Grund et al. ( 2024) describe a review of literature bringing together research on the conceptualization of mental effort and its interlinkages to components of motivation. The authors introduce a novel categorization of how to conceptualize effort based on its underlying psychological sources of experiencing and allocating mental effort: effort-by-complexity, effort-by-need frustration, and effort-by-allocation. The authors provide a strong plea for consideration of the affective components of mental effort when measuring cognitive mental effort (i.e., effort invested or experienced when working on a learning task). They argue that motivational and emotional factors play a crucial role in shaping both the willingness to invest effort and the subjective experience of effort as either manageable or taxing.

Seufert, Hamm, Vogt, and Riemer

The paper by Seufert et al. ( 2024) examines the relationship between task difficulty and self-regulatory activities, focusing on the mediating role of learner resources and cognitive load. Through a within-subjects study involving 67 participants, a cognitive and metacognitive strategy use was examined across tasks of varying difficulty. Results showed an inverted U-shaped relationship between task difficulty and learners' use of cognitive strategies, validating the Seufert (2018) model. A positive linear relationship was observed between task difficulty and learners' use of metacognitive strategies. Cognitive load mediated both relationships, while learner resources showed competitive mediation, suggesting the relevance of further mediators. The authors conclude that the Seufert (2018) model offers a promising framework to help learners actively and independently construct knowledge and gain learning competencies.

Sidi and Ackerman

Sidi and Ackerman ( 2024) present a comprehensive review of the advantages and pitfalls of offering the option for learners to opt out of responding to learning tasks in educational settings. Their findings show that research on opting out can improve our understanding of self-directed learning by shedding light on how students manage and allocate their cognitive resources and recognize their limitations. Moreover, opting out should not be interpreted solely as a sign of low motivation. It can also be indicative of effective effort regulation: effective opting-out usage would result in dedicated effort investments in tasks within one's region of proximal learning while seeking help for tasks that elicit high uncertainty. The authors set out a research agenda for examining the impact of incorporating explicit opt-out options in instructional design and to explore opting out from a cognitive load theory (CLT) perspective.

Wirth, Weber-Reuter, Schuster, Fleischer, Leutner, and Stebner

Wirth et al. ( 2025) describe an experimental field study involving 10-year-old students, in which two different training conditions of a cognitive learning strategy were combined with training of metacognitive regulation and ultimately compared to a control condition. In the direct training group, both cognitive learning strategies and metacognitive regulation were explicitly taught. In the direct and indirect training conditions, this intervention was combined with indirect training in which the metacognitive regulation of learning strategies was prompted but not explicitly taught. Although no significant differences between the two training conditions were observed and effect sizes were small, the results provide preliminary evidence for far metacognitive transfer: students in the training conditions showed improved metacognitive regulation of effort, a cognitive strategy that had not been taught in the training.

Abel, de Bruin, Onan, and Roelle

The paper by Abel et al. ( 2024) reports two experiments investigating why learners scarcely apply interleaving when studying easily confusable categories, even though it is a more effective learning strategy than the typically preferred blocked learning strategy. Together, their two experiments showed that combining two factors-increasing the utility value of distinguishing as a task goal and providing learners with the conditional knowledge that distinguishing and detection differences matter-fostered learners' use of interleaving. Providing the conditional knowledge that interleaving strategies highlight differences did not affect the use of interleaving, suggesting that learners were already aware of this. The authors conclude that learners' preference for blocking may reflect a deliberate investment of effort to identify commonalities, rather than an attempt to minimize effort. They recommend highlighting the utility value of distinguishing and informing learners about the importance of finding differences for distinguishing.

Evans, Vansteenkiste, Parker, Kingsford-Smith, and Zhou

Evans et al. ( 2024) explored how instructional strategies impact students' cognitive load, motivation, engagement, and achievement. Surveying 1287 students in Australian high schools, the study found that teachers' use of load-reducing strategies correlated with lower cognitive load and higher autonomous motivation, engagement, and achievement. Additionally, teachers' motivating styles, emphasizing autonomy support and structure, were linked to reduced cognitive load and increased motivation and engagement. These findings suggest that employing load-reducing strategies and a motivating teaching style can enhance students' self-regulated motivation, engagement, and achievement.

Waldeyer, Endres, Roelle, Baars, and Renkl

Waldeyer et al. ( 2024) report two experiments examining how cue instructions affect learners' self-assessment accuracy during problem-solving tasks. Results showed that learners' self-assessments were most accurate when they were prompted to infer these from performance-based cues (problem-solving performance), rather than from explanation-based cues (ability to explain the problems' solutions), and when these prompts were given before the problem-solving phase rather than after this phase. Only when combined with both specific cue criteria instructions and self-explanation prompts, explanation-based cues yielded similar levels of self-assessment accuracy as performance-based cues. The authors conclude that it is more efficient to prompt learners to monitor performance-based rather than explanation-based cues in the initial problem-solving phase.

Endres, Bender, Sepp, Zhang, David, Trypke, Lieck, Désiron, Bohm, and Weissgerber

Endres et al. ( 2025) address the challenge of assessing mental effort in self-regulated learning across different languages, where variations in terminology can hinder research comparisons. The study aimed to develop a translingual set of items that differentiate between intentionally invested mental effort and passively perceived mental load. Using a mixed-methods approach, researchers assessed the scale's content, criterion, convergent, and incremental validity. Bilingual participants were interviewed, and rigorous translations and back-translations were made in six languages (English, Dutch, Spanish, German, Chinese, and French) to ensure content validity. Preregistered experiments validated the scale's sensitivity to measuring task complexity and cognitive load in English, Chinese, and German samples. Findings demonstrated medium correlations with established cognitive load measures, supporting its reliability. The study provides validated translingual items for future research and recommends using a set of four key items within a reference-point evaluation framework.

Scheiter

The discussion paper by Scheiter ( 2025) provides a critical reflection on contributions within this topical collection, addressing the theoretical and empirical challenges that merging CLT and SRL theory brings. As a necessary next step, Scheiter emphasizes the need for a more unified approach that integrates cognitive and motivational theories. She also reflects critically on the type of (effort-related) appraisals that learners are prompted to provide in the research in this topical collection and warns against a jangle fallacy, while also calling for parsimony regarding the number of constructs used when attempting to explain the phenomena of interest.

Relation of Contributions to the EMR Model

The EMR model (de Bruin et al., 2020) was introduced with three general research questions derived from its framework. We briefly reflect on how the current contributions address these questions. In the next section, we discuss the overall evidence for the EMR model to date and how to move this field of research forward.

Research Question 1: How Do Students Monitor Effort?

The meta-analysis by David et al. ( 2024) suggests that learners mainly interpret higher perceived effort as a cue that they are not learning effectively, despite a moderate relationship between effort and actual learning outcomes. Notably, due to a lack of available studies, the authors were unable to examine the conditions under which learners might interpret effort as a positive cue of learning. These findings align with prior work by Scheiter et al. ( 2020), who argued that mental effort ratings are not objective indicators of task load. This perspective highlights the importance of understanding how learners interpret and use perceived effort as a cue to optimize self-regulated learning. Moreover, the four experiments in van Gog et al. ( 2024) and the theoretical review by Grund et al. ( 2024) show that perceptions of (anticipated) mental effort and willingness to invest effort are significantly influenced by motivational factors, such as self-efficacy, feelings of challenge or threat towards a learning task, and the psychological sources of experiencing and allocating mental effort: effort-by-complexity, effort-by-need frustration, and effort-by-allocation. These findings emphasize the importance of examining how the relation between mental effort and metacognitive judgments of learning may be moderated by other factors such as motivational issues or self-efficacy, given that effort expenditure and its ensuing learning effects may critically hinge on these factors.

Research Question 2: How Do Students Regulate Effort?

Seufert et al. ( 2024) and Sidi and Ackerman ( 2024) demonstrate that the way students regulate their efforts is influenced by the educational context. For example, as task difficulty increases, students invest more effort in applying cognitive and metacognitive strategies (Seufert et al., 2024). Yet, when task difficulty becomes too high, this seems to result in cognitive overload, leading to reduced use of cognitive strategies. These latter findings could also be interpreted as effective effort regulation when considering the review findings from Sidi and Ackerman ( 2024): opting out of an overly difficult task to invest effort in a more feasible task is an effective self-regulation strategy. Offering learners the option to opt out, which is rare in educational settings, holds promise for advancing understanding of effort regulation. These findings might also explain the findings related to research question 1: the negative correlation between perceived effort and perceived learning might be due to situations where perceived effort is relatively high, and learners' perception of effort might be positively related to perceived learning when the effort is low to moderate. Both Wirth et al. ( 2025) and Abel et al. ( 2024) show that providing relevant learning strategy instruction benefits learners' effort regulation decisions. Wirth et al. ( 2025) operationalized metacognitive regulation of effort as the alignment between self-reported required mental effort for a learning task and the self-reported mental effort invested in the task. Their experiment showed that cognitive learning strategy instruction improves learners' metacognitive regulation of effort and that this acquired regulation skill transfers to learning strategies not addressed in the training. Finally, Abel et al. ( 2024) showed that students' decisions to rely on less effortful and less effective study strategies do not necessarily reflect a lack of willingness to invest more effort in a study strategy, but rather a lack of awareness of the specific study goal of a task and the required approach to achieve that goal. Their experiments demonstrated that increasing the utility value of the task's goal and providing conditional knowledge on how to achieve that goal encouraged the use of interleaving, a typically more effortful but also more effective strategy for category learning.

Research Question 3: How Do We Optimize Cognitive Load on SRL tasks (During and After the Primary Task)?

Evans et al. ( 2024) demonstrated that certain teaching styles can simultaneously reduce experienced cognitive load and foster important SRL skills. A load-reducing instructional style by teachers and motivating styles of autonomy support and structure predicted lower experienced extraneous and intrinsic cognitive load by students, which in turn was associated with higher autonomous motivation. Waldeyer et al. ( 2024) investigated how task design affects experienced load and the crucial SRL skill of self-assessment accuracy. They showed that it is more efficient for self-assessment accuracy on problem-solving tasks to prompt learners to monitor using performance-based cues rather than explanation-based cues in the initial problem-solving phase. Interestingly, the experienced cognitive load was not affected by the type and timing of cue instruction.

Moving Forward: Deepening the EMR Model to Support Monitoring and Regulation of Effort

Since the publication of the EMR model, over 140 citing papers, including the studies in this topical collection, have examined research questions and assumptions related to how learners monitor and regulate effort, and how cognitive load can be optimized in SRL tasks (de Bruin et al., 2020). Evaluating the findings and impact of these studies, and acknowledging developments in related areas, such as motivational science, we identify three patterns and describe accompanying suggestions for future research. First, when examining how to support learners to optimally monitor and regulate their mental effort, it has become clear that learners tend to take a data-driven approach and interpret high effort as an indicator of poor learning and vice versa. Building on earlier work by Baars et al. ( 2020), the meta-analysis by David et al. ( 2024) also reports a negative correlation between perceived effort and perceived learning across 46 and 35 papers, respectively. Furthermore, David et al. ( 2024) demonstrate that this negative interpretation is only partially justified, given the moderate association between effort and learning outcomes. Given the potential drawback of such an unwarranted negative interpretation of effort on self-regulated learning and learning outcomes, further research is needed on how to support learners in shifting from a data-driven to a goal-driven interpretation, recognizing high effort as a necessary investment in long-term learning. This research goal calls for greater integration of theory and research paradigms related to instructional design and affective science to examine what factors moderate the relation between perceived effort and perceived learning. Studies like the ones reported by van Gog et al. ( 2024) contribute to that question by investigating how factors such as feedback valence can influence challenge or threat experiences and affect perceived effort. Grund et al. ( 2024) similarly emphasize the importance of disentangling effort due to task complexity from effort to physiological needs frustration, aiming to optimize the first while minimizing the latter. In the context of the EMR model and the related Start and Stick to Desirable Difficulties (S2D2) framework (see de Bruin et al., 2023), it is highly relevant to research the novel posited assumption that engaging in desirable difficulties is possible without ensuing negative effort experiences.

Second, research in this domain has largely relied on self-reported indications of mental effort, based on ample research supporting its validity. However, since the 2020 special issue on cognitive load and self-regulated learning, the notion that learners can experience effort in a data-driven or goal-driven manner and the notion that perceived effort is a sheer metacognitive judgment have set foot. Yet, our measures of mental effort have not developed in line with this evolution (see also Seufert, 2024). We hardly know how to differentially tap into learners' data-driven interpretations or goal-driven interpretations of effort, nor do we know whether a data-driven interpretation of effort truly indicates poor effort regulation, or, alternatively, how learners invest effort when perceived effort is high. Yet, to tackle the big questions in this field, a solid basis for measuring the potentially subtle differences in subjective experiences is crucial. To better understand these processes, ample research is needed to unravel how to validly measure these and other subtypes of effort experiences, where there is a complementary approach between self-report and behavioral measures (e.g., of time devoted to a task as a measure of effort allocation).

Building on the second point, our third point revolves around circumstances where perceived effort does not appear to influence effort regulation, or where perceptions of effort are silenced. As the study by Abel et al. ( 2024) shows, what seems like a misinterpretation of effort may instead reflect a knowledge gap or misconception about effective learning. Similarly, high-stakes contexts or highly important goals may lead learners to suppress or ignore effort perceptions. Broadening the scope of research to such contexts will shed light on when to take perceived effort into the equation and when to spend instructional support elsewhere.

Conclusion

In sum, the growing body of research on the EMR model has provided valuable insights into how learners monitor and regulate effort, yet critical questions remain. Moving forward, it is essential to refine our understanding of how learners transition from a data-driven to a goal-driven interpretation of effort and to develop instructional interventions that foster this shift. Integrating motivational and affective science perspectives will be crucial to uncovering the nuanced relationship between perceived effort, perceived learning, and learning outcomes. Additionally, advancing measurement tools to distinguish between different interpretations of effort will provide a more precise understanding of effort monitoring and regulation. Finally, broadening research to include contexts where effort perceptions are reduced or silenced will illuminate when and how instructional interventions should be deployed. By addressing these gaps, we can deepen the EMR model's impact, ensuring that students recognize effort not as a barrier, but as a key driver of meaningful and lasting learning.

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

1. Department of Educational Development and Research, School of Health Professions Education, Maastricht University, Universiteitssingel 60, Postbus 616, Maastricht, 6200 MD, The Netherlands

Anique B. H. de Bruin

2. Department of Education, Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences, Utrecht University, Utrecht, The Netherlands

Eva M. Janssen

3. Faculty of Philosophy and Educational Research, Ruhr University Bochum, Bochum, Germany

Julia Waldeyer

4. Institute of Educational Science, University of Osnabrück, Osnabrück, Germany

Ferdinand Stebner

5. Institute of Educational Psychology, Technische Universität Braunschweig, Braunschweig, Germany

Julia Waldeyer

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Anique B. H. de Bruin.

Ethics declarations

The author has no competing interests to declare that are relevant to the content of this article. This work was funded by the Dutch Research Council (NWO) [VIDI grant number: VI.Vidi.195.135], by the Jacobs Foundation, and by the European Association for Research on Learning and Instruction (EARLI). We thank Eva Metz for editing the language and references in this manuscript. The authors would like to deeply thank all members of the EARLI Emerging Field Group "Monitoring and Regulation of Effort" for ongoing discussions and collaborations that contributed to the conceptualization of this work.

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de Bruin, A.B.H., Janssen, E.M., Waldeyer, J. et al. Cognitive Load and Challenges in Self-regulation: An Introduction and Reflection on the Topical Collection. Educ Psychol Rev 37, 65 (2025). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-025-10042-2
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Cognitive Load and Challenges in Self-regulation: An Introduction and Reflection on the Topical Collection - Educational Psychology Review

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
The effort monitoring and regulation (EMR) model integrates self-regulated learning and cognitive load theory to examine how students monitor, regulate, and optimize effort during learning. Since its introduction in 2020, it has inspired research that explores how to correct learners' misinterpretations of effort and metacognitive biases and how instructional interventions can improve learning strategies.

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EPI 2018 Literature review: key drivers of the disadvantage gap

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EPI 2018 Literature review: key drivers of the disadvantage gap

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Breaking down the gap - Education Policy Institute

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The latest report by EPI investigates the drivers of the disadvantage gap and calls on the government to address the underlying causes of school absences, as it identifies higher levels of absence to be a key factor in the attainment…Read more Breaking down the gap ›

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Sept 23 Shocking rise in speech and language challenges

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Sept 23 Shocking rise in speech and language challenges

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.title
Strong foundations in the first years of school

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
This report examines how schools secure the foundational knowledge and skills that every child needs by the end of key stage 1 to give them the best chance of educational success. Schools are facing significant challenges in dealing with the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on children currently in Reception and key stage 1. This report identifies what might be particularly important for schools to focus on.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat

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The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement.

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School inspection: toolkit, operating guide and information

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Guidance for inspectors and schools on inspecting maintained schools and academies in England under the renewed education inspection framework, available for use from 10 November 2025.

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Impact of teachers on pupil achievement - Sutton Trust

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Impact of teachers on pupil achievement - Sutton Trust

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High quality teaching's impact on pupil achievement

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Children all claim they are neither 'rich' or 'poor', but are keenly aware of social differences ('chavs'/'posh').

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Low income and early cognitive development

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Low income and early cognitive development

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On school entry, pupils from low income families ref as one year difference in vocab development

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Low Income and Early Cognitive Development in the U.K. - The Sutton Trust

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A report for the Sutton Trust by Jane Waldfogel and Elizabeth Washbrook on educational inequalities in the early years.

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Reading improves vocabulary = reading unlocks disadvantage

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Reading improves vocabulary = reading unlocks disadvantage

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Reading improves teenagers’ vocab, whatever their background, say researchers - CLS

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Teenagers who read in their spare time know 26 per cent more words than those who never read, according to researchers at the Centre for Longitudinal Studies (CLS). The research team, based at the UCL Institute of Education, found that teenagers who read often, and those who had access to plenty of books,were more likely […]

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Bringing words to life - robust vocabulary instruction

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Bringing words to life - robust vocabulary instruction

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Isabel L. Beck, PhD, is Professor Emerita of Education in the School of Education at the University of Pittsburgh. She has conducted research and published widely in the areas of decoding, vocabulary, and comprehension. Her contributions have been acknowledged by awards from the International Reading Association, the National Reading Conference, and the American Federation of Teachers, and she is an elected member of the National Academy of Education.

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[Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction] (By: Isabel L. Beck) [published: May, 2013]

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Buy [Bringing Words to Life: Robust Vocabulary Instruction] (By: Isabel L. Beck) [published: May, 2013] by Isabel L. Beck (ISBN: ) from Amazon's Book Store. Everyday low prices and free delivery on eligible orders.

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Socioeconomic & experiential influences on language development

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Socioeconomic & experiential influences on language development

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Socioeconomic and experiential influences on the neurobiology of language development - PubMed

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Findings from the neuroscience field have direct implications for practice in speech language pathology. Specifically, clinicians can have immense influence on crafting supportive language environments during windows of maximal neural influence, both via direct intervention and parent coaching. Prac …

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Promote, deliver, and design high-quality learning opportunities.

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Working with Parents to Support Children’s Learning

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Work with parents and carers to support learning.

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FFT England loses high achieving disadvantaged mathematicians

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FFT England loses high achieving disadvantaged mathematicians

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Why does England lose so many promising young mathematicians from disadvantaged socio-economic backgrounds? - FFT Education Datalab

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A look at the leaky pipeline for pupils who show potential in maths at age eleven but don’t go on to pursue the subject.

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Long term research into outcomes for high achieving disadvantaged pupils

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Long term research into outcomes for high achieving disadvantaged pupils

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This project will investigate the long-term social, health, and labour market outcomes of disadvantaged children who were high-achieving at the end of primary school.

Why is this important?

Children from disadvantaged backgrounds who excel academically have the potential to become upwardly socially mobile and obtain the benefits that this brings. However, many do not fulfil their early potential. There has been long-standing interest in this group but little policy focus since 2010. This research will determine whether there is a case for renewed attention.

What does it involve?

The research team will use four large administrative databases linked to the National Pupil Database and two large longitudinal surveys to answer three research questions:

1. How do the economic, education, health, and crime outcomes of high-achieving children from disadvantaged backgrounds compare to lower-achieving children from more advantaged family backgrounds, through to their mid-twenties?

2. Do the economic, education, health, and crime outcomes of high-achieving disadvantaged pupils differ between key sub-groups?

3. To what extent can the difference in outcomes between high-achieving disadvantaged children and other groups be traced back to how they performed in examinations at ages 16 and 18? How do their attitudes, behaviours, and beliefs change during adolescence, and is this related to their outcomes in early adulthood?

Children will be identified as high-achieving and disadvantaged on the basis of Key Stage 2 scores in English and mathematics at the end of primary school and according to Free School Meal status and a measure of local area disadvantage.

The analysis will compare the outcomes of children according to achievement and socio-economic background and explore whether these have changed over time. Differences in outcomes between boys and girls, white and other ethnic groups, and grammar and non-grammar pupils will be explored. The final stage of analysis will use two longitudinal survey datasets to explore the mechanisms by which high-achieving disadvantaged children may experience different outcomes to other groups, including engagement in risky behaviours and mental health problems.

How will it make a difference?

The findings will inform policymakers, researchers, commentators, and the public about early adult outcomes of high-achieving children from disadvantaged backgrounds. If supported by the research evidence, the intention is to prompt greater policy focus on such young people, influencing national initiatives, evaluations and reviews.

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Long-term outcomes of high-achieving disadvantaged children - Nuffield Foundation

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This project will investigate the long-term social, health, and labour market outcomes of high-achieving disadvantaged children.

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Various FFT data posts about high achieving disadvantaged pupils

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Various FFT data posts about high achieving disadvantaged pupils

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John Jerrim, Author at FFT Education Datalab

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Educational outcomes across England Aug 2025

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Educational outcomes across England Aug 2025

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The 2010s saw educational attainment increase, and disparities narrow, across England's schools - but this progress was brought to a shuddering halt when Covid hit.

Since 2019, educational inequalities have again grown wider and more pronounced, both across the country and among various demographic groups, with some areas and groups now lagging far behind others.

With the new government aiming to break the link between a child's background and their future success as part of its opportunity mission, it needs to understand where and to what extent educational outcomes have changed and who is at risk of being 'left behind'. That is what this report, the latest in our Performance Tracker Local series supported by the Nuffield Foundation, seeks to help it do.
The report's methodology is found at the bottom of this page (PDF).

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Educational outcomes across England | Institute for Government

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Examining the performance gaps in schools.

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In the context of Notting Hill, Thomas Jones is unique, in that it is the only community school with one form of entry. An advantage of this is that it frequently feels like a ‘big family’.

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Welcome to St Matthew’s C of E Primary School

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We know that primary education only takes 8 years, but lasts a lifetime.

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The role of teachers’ expectations in the association between children’s SES and performance in kindergarten: a moderated mediation analysis - PubMed

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This study examines the role of teachers’ expectations in the association between children’s socio-economic background and achievement outcomes. Furthermore, the role of children’s ethnicity in moderating this mediated relation is investigated. In the present study, 3,948 children from kindergarten …

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Understanding early inequalities: Multiple dimensions of children's developmental contexts predict age 3 outcomes

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Understanding early inequalities: Multiple dimensions of children's developmental contexts predict age 3 outcomes

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Building a culture of evidence and research use: Cat Scutt

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Building a culture of evidence and research use: Cat Scutt

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Building a culture of evidence and research use: Selected reading : My College

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Interest in evidence-based practice in the teaching profession has continued to grow over the last few years. This selected reading and resource list, initially published in 2019, has been fully refreshed and updated with the latest resources in May 2022. Evidence-based practice is not about blindly following ‘evidence’; it is all about bringing together academic […]

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Funds of knowledge - pupils as full of knowledge

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Funds of knowledge - pupils as full of knowledge

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SecEd best practice oracy incl section on oracy and disadvantage

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SecEd best practice oracy incl section on oracy and disadvantage

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A SecEd best practice guide to teaching oracy in schools - SecEd

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This free guide offers ideas, advice and case studies for teaching oracy skills in the secondary school classroom

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Enabling engagement with families of pre-school children experiencing

homelessness and the hostile environment

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Trust for London inequality factsheets by borough 

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Trust for London inequality factsheets by borough 

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Use the map below to find data for your borough. Or to explore a heatmap comparing all boroughs across different poverty and inequality indicators, view our Overview of boroughs page.

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We tackle poverty and inequality in London

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The Science of Learning Deans for Impact

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The Science of Learning Deans for Impact

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Deans for Impact - The Science of Learning

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Deans for Impact - The Science of Learning

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Rosenshine IAE Principles of Instruction pamphlet

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Rosenshine IAE Principles of Instruction pamphlet

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Improving universal provision Cathy Potter & Marc Rowland

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Improving universal provision Cathy Potter & Marc Rowland

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Improve universal provision for all pupils

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Cathy Potter and Marc Rowland share insight from the OneCornwall project

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Growing up in a low-income family: Children’s experiences | Children’s Commissioner for England

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This report should not have to exist. Shining a light on children’s experiences of poverty in 2025, in one of the wealthiest countries in the world,

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InnerDrive big Ofsted inclusion analysis

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InnerDrive big Ofsted inclusion analysis

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Checking for understanding with mini whiteboards - Cathy Potter

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Checking for understanding with mini whiteboards - Cathy Potter

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Checking for understanding with mini whiteboards

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Checking for understanding with mini whiteboards