EEFective Kent Project

Evaluation Report

In autumn 2019, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and Kent County Council (KCC) formed a partnership and created a new joint fund worth £600,000 to support improvements in education across Kent. The goal of the EEFective Kent Project (EKP) was to bring evidence-based programmes to Kent to support school improvement and the attainment of all pupils, particularly those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

The project had three key strands of activity.

• Strand 1 Promising Projects: Promising Projects are programmes and interventions that have been independently evaluated by the EEF with promising results and therefore, identified as having high potential to improve attainment. Schools were able to apply for 50% matched funding from EKP in order to implement a Promising Project.
• Strand 2 Evidence-Based Training: This was a training offer designed to meet the needs of Kent’s schools, covering topics such as ‘SEND (special educational needs and disabilities) and Learning Behaviours’ and ‘Tackling Educational Disadvantage’. The training aimed to give schools an evidence base around their priority area, tools to understand their context, and to understand successful implementation.
• Strand 3 Developing Research Champions: The aim of this strand was to develop, embed, and sustain evidence-based practice and leadership at multiple levels within the Kent school system to ensure a legacy beyond the life of the project. It included activities such as developing a network of Evidence Champions and the appointment of a Kent Associate Research School (KARS).

The project was intended to run for three years from September 2019 until July 2022 but was extended to July 2023 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The mixed-methods evaluation aimed to increase understanding about knowledge mobilisation and the uptake of evidence-based practices in Kent, exploring EKP’s reach, feasibility, promise, and sustainability. The evaluation used data from surveys, interviews, and management information, with participants including staff from KCC, the EEF, schools, and other relevant stakeholder organisations. The evaluation was relatively light-touch and aimed to generate a descriptive account of project activities and reflections on lessons learned to inform future projects and policy.

The evaluation faced several issues. This included poor response to the endline survey, difficulties in recruiting enough participants per school for the intended case study approach, and few interviews taking place with schools that had not participated in EKP. Delays to project delivery and the subsequent withdrawal of the post-project evaluation phase meant that the evaluation could not adequately assess sustained changes in practice within schools. The difficulties in implementing the intended design limits confidence in the evaluation’s findings.