Report

The pilot intervention ‘Embedding contextualisation in English and mathematics GCSE teaching’ trains English and maths teachers to use examples from real life and vocational contexts in their teaching to emphasise the relevance of studies to the future careers of students. The aim is to improve students’ motivation and engagement, leading to improvements in retention and attainment. The intervention is developed by the Association of Employment and Learning Providers (AELP) and Mathematics in Education and Industry (MEI).

The Changing Mindsets project aimed to improve attainment outcomes at the end of primary school by teaching Year 6 pupils that their brain potential was not a fixed entity but could grow and change through effort exerted. The programme, delivered by Portsmouth University, taught pupils about the malleability of intelligence through workshops. Teachers attended short professional development courses on approaches to developing a ‘growth mindset’ before delivering sessions to pupils weekly, over eight consecutive weeks.

The Spanish economy has been growing at over 3% since 2015, above the average for the EU and the euro area. Unemployment, although still 10 percentage points above the EU average, has fallen from a high of 26.1% in 2013 to 17.2% in 2017. Interest rates are at historical lows thanks to the expansive monetary policy of the European Central Bank. The public deficit has fallen substantially in recent years and is close to, but still above, 3%, and there has been a current account surplus for several years. Therefore, Spain’s macroeconomic situation appears healthy.

This report is part of the Youth Jobs Gap research series, which uses new Longitudinal Education Outcomes data to present new insights into disadvantaged young people’s transition from compulsory education into employment. The first three national reports have looked at NEET rates, higher education, and apprenticeships respectively. These national reports have also looked at differences between regions – but differences within the regions are often greater than the differences between regions.

Traineeships are an education and training programme that provide young people aged 16-24 with an intensive period of work experience and work preparation training, as well as offering them support in improving their English and maths, to give them the best opportunity of entering an apprenticeship or employment. This report, for the Department For Education, estimates the impact of participating in a Traineeship. It forms part of a wider evaluation of the Traineeships programme. The evaluation includes the following strands:

• Surveys of trainees, employers and providers;

There is plenty of evidence to indicate that teacher quality matters for pupil attainment. But teachers do not work in a vacuum. They are employed to work in schools, usually under the direction of supervisors and a Head Teacher who, together with a governing board and officials in local and central government, make numerous decisions about their allocation within and across schools, the resources they have at their disposal, the support they receive, the curriculum they must teach and the way they are compensated.

Religious and ethnic segregation in schools is an issue of concern for educationalists and policy makers because it has implications for equality and for inclusion and social cohesion. This report was commissioned by the Department for Education to provide evidence on how segregation might be addressed by reviewing available evidence on approaches in place to promote religious and ethnic integration in education settings.

This Education Endowment Foundation project was a randomised controlled trial (RCT) with 127 schools participating. It tested two interventions: the Improving Working Memory intervention (WM) and an adapted version, named the Working Memory Plus intervention (WM+). Both aimed to improve the numeracy skills of Year 3 pupils (aged 7-8) who were behind the class average in numeracy by improving their working memory: the ability to remember and manipulate information over short time-frames.

In the wake of Parliament’s rejection of the proposed Brexit deal, there have been discussions between the Government and the Labour Party on a customs union as the basis for the future relationship between the United Kingdom and the European Union. This option also gained substantial support in the indicative votes held in the House of Commons in late March and early April. Therefore, even if the Government and the Labour Party cannot reach an agreement, a customs union deal is unlikely to disappear from the agenda any time soon.

This report establishes for the first time an employment gap between young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their better-off peers: disadvantaged young people are twice as likely to not be in employment, education or training (NEET). Looking at the regional breakdowns, we see that in the North of England, the situation is worse. We also discover that, somewhat surprisingly, qualifications can only explain half of this gap.