Peep Exploring Together: Supporting the foundations of Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths (STEM)

Evaluation report

In the current UK labour market there is a significant lack of ‘STEM capital’ - the interest, knowledge, confidence and appreciation of available opportunities, and a shortage of STEM skills. The shortfall in capital and skills is magnified among girls and other groups in society in particular, those from disadvantaged families.

Peeple is a charity that supports parents and their children to learn together. They develop interventions and train practitioners nationally. In response to a lack of STEM capital and skill and the lack of explicit initiatives to address these, Peeple wanted to design and test an intervention to support practitioners and parents to encourage the foundations of STEM in children aged 3–5 years old through everyday activities in their EY settings and at home. The intervention became known as the Peep Exploring Together Programme. In Autumn 2020, Peeple successfully submitted a proposal to the Mercers’ Company, as part of their philanthropic Special Initiative in Early Years, Literacy and Transitions. The proposal combined expertise from Peeple, the University of Oxford, Sheringham Nursery School and Children’s Centre and IES.

Research methods

IES worked closely with Peeple in a ‘critical friend’ model throughout the project and included supporting the team to carry out some of their own evaluation work and reviewing the practitioner training. All partners worked closely to adapt and develop the design of the independent evaluation. Due to the difficulties with recruitment and the move away from an RCT, the independent evaluation became more exploratory. It did not try to explore robust impact or causality but focussed on the quality of the home learning environment in relation to science and maths, and the perceived impact of the Exploring Together Intervention on practitioners, parents and children.

The report also includes a brief summary of the analysis of parent-reported changes (through a questionnaire) with regard to maths and science in the HLE carried out by the research team at the University of Oxford, and the research findings.