Projects

These are projects that are still in progress, some almost done, others a long way off.

Characterising Effective Teaching

Education is crucially important for many of the key policy outcomes that citizens and politicians care about, including growth and prosperity, inequality, and social mobility. Unsurprisingly, researchers have analysed many factors that affect an individual’s skills, but over recent years a strong consensus has developed that teacher effectiveness is extremely important in raising pupil attainment.

However, there is a gap in the middle of this field: while we know effective teaching matters enormously, there is little evidence to characterise what effective teaching actually is.

In this project, with Eric Taylor and Shenila Rawal, we start to fill this important gap in the field by exploiting a unique dataset we collected as part of an earlier randomised controlled trial. This project was funded by the Nuffield Foundation.

Pupil incentives project

With Sally Sadoff, John List and Rob Metcalfe, and run by CMPO Schools Team. The project was funded by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). We ran a field experiment on around 10,000 pupils in deprived schools in England. The experiment was run as a randomised control trial (RCT), and introduced incentives for pupil behaviour with the aim of improving their performance on the high stakes tests, GCSEs. The intervention is over and we are running the analysis now.

Teacher Observation Project

With Eric Taylor and Shenila Rawal, and run by CMPO Schools Team. The project was funded by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). We are running a large scale field experiment on over 80 secondary schools in deprived neighbourhoods in England, using an RCT design.  The intervention facilitates peer observation of teachers in Maths and English in the GCSE years by their peers. The observation is supported by a protocol installed on tablets. The intervention is in its final year.

Widening Participation – mentors, finances and aspiration

With Michael Sanders, Raj Chande, Lindsey Macmillan, Catherine Dilnot, and run by CMPO Schools Team. The project is funded by the University of Bristol as part of its widening participation remit.  The intervention is in its final year of three.

Parental Engagement Project

With Todd Rogers and Raj Chande, and run by CMPO Schools Team. The project was funded by Education Endowment Foundation (EEF). The intervention is now complete and we are analysing the results.

Peer effects on classroom behaviour

With Claudia Herresthal. We use pupil-level data on behaviour in classrooms in England to understand and quantify peer effects.

School accountability and pupil outcomes

Working with Dave Thomson to analyse the impact of the recent reforms in England on pupil attainment.

I am also working on a number of other projects in education.