Evaluation of Education Programmes and Policies

Dear Colleagues,

The last decade has been an exciting era for education research. It has seen a burgeoning of rigorous evaluations of education programmes and policies, not only in the UK, US and Europe, but also in Latin America, Africa, Asia and elsewhere. New and more robust approaches have been developed, tried and applied to the evaluation of education programmes.

More organisations and countries are recognising the importance of evidence-based practices in education. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the UK and the Institute of Education Sciences in the US are just two examples of organisations that are committed to evaluating education programmes and policies to ensure that programmes and policies used in schools are based on the best evidence.

International assessments, such as PISA, TIMSS, PIRLS and TALIS, provide valuable data on the performance of students and education systems across different countries and regions, which can be used to inform education policies and practices.  Access to administrative datasets has also made it possible to evaluate the effectiveness of education policies on a large scale. The use of robust research methods and the availability of data have greatly enhanced our ability to evaluate education policies and programmes and make evidence-based decisions. This Special Issue aims to curate a collection of such evaluations.

Why the need to evaluate education programmes and policies?

Whilst many education programmes have been evaluated, there is also an abundance of education classroom practices that have not been rigorously evaluated. For example, there is still no clear evidence whether class sizes, streaming or tracking, academic selection, academisation of schools (England) and grade retention are beneficial, and for which phase of education and in what context. Further, the proliferation of education technology and online teaching resources, especially during the lockdown in the recent COVID-19 pandemic, has seen many of these resources and this technology used by schools. Most of these have not been tested. Some may, indeed, be detrimental to learning.

Evaluating education policies and practices is crucial to ensure that our children receive the best possible education. It is important to recognise that different contexts and different groups of children may require different approaches to education. What works well in one school or community may not work as well in another, and what works for one group of students may not work for another. Evaluating education programmes and policies allows us to understand these nuances and tailor our approach to education to best meet the needs of all students.

In this Special Issue, we would like to invite papers that evaluate education policies, practices and programmes for all phases of education, from early years to higher education. We are particularly interested in rigorous research in the evaluation of education programmes and policies. These could be systematic reviews, meta-analyses and experimental studies, such as randomised control trials and quasi-experimental studies, e.g., regression discontinuity and difference-in-difference approaches. We also welcome articles that focus on methodological issues, conceptual pieces on policy evaluations and replication works.

If you would like to contribute to this Special Issue, please submit an abstract of between 250 and 300 words.

Prof. Dr. Beng Huat See
Guest Editor

Loraine Hitt
Guest Editor Assistant

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a double-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Education Sciences is an international peer-reviewed open access monthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 1800 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• programme evaluation
• policy evaluation
• systematic reviews
• education interventions
• experimental designs
• process or implementation evaluations

Title: Advancing evaluation of local system change: learning from evaluating the Family Hubs initiative

Abstract: Whilst significant advances have been made in evaluation of educational interventions, for example through the work of the Education Endowment Foundation in the UK, progress in evaluation of complex local system change is slower. In this paper we reflect on recent evaluations focussed on England's Family Hubs place-based initiative, which aims to join up services for families of young children in local areas. The evaluations consisted of a deep dive into the operation of one Local Authority's Family Hubs approach, and a study of the application of behavioural science approaches to understand engagement with Family Hubs. The article draws out a set of key challenges grouped around theorisation, design, implementation and backdrop, (building Stame's (2010) work on evaluation failure, and Rog's (2012) categorisations of context, identifying methodological solutions and gaps in these that require further work.

Title: Where are the costs? The application of cost methodology for a region wide evaluation of formative assessment programme

Abstract: Education systems are moving to a more evidence informed paradigm, with a focus at all levels to utilise evidence to support practice and policy making. Good quality research can support decision makers to identify more promising approaches to improve learner outcomes, but there are gaps in the evaluative framework (Levin, 2017). Understanding the economic impact of choices when determining education provision is an important aspect to consider, but there are currently very few examples of this described in education (Kraft, 2020). This paper evaluates the Formative Assessment Implementation Project (FAIP), a regional school improvement project designed to improve teachers’ understanding and use of a range of formative assessment principles and strategies to improve learner outcomes. This paper describes the use of a mixed method quasi-experimental design to explore the impact on a range of learner outcomes, including measures of wellbeing, health utility and attainment, including an economic impact evaluation. Using methodology commonly employed in health economics to evaluate economic costs, this paper explores the utility of using these evaluation tools in education. A cost-consequence analysis (CCA) was performed, and we present an evaluation of learner outcomes when considered alongside the cost of the intervention. The function of CCA is to allow decision makers to decide which outcomes are the most relevant to their context whilst still being able to understand the cost of the project. The paper will discuss the difficulties of evaluating large scale universal interventions in education (Greenberg & Abenavoli, 2017) and consider the tools needed to improve the quality and robustness of economic evaluations in education research. The paper concludes with recommendations for evaluators to routinely include cost methodology in future research studies.

Title: Evaluating an active multi-component dissemination approach to improve teachers’ use of research evidence in practice
Author: Erkan
Highlights: • Getting evidence into use is not a straightforward process • Asking teachers to judge the quality of evidence may unintentionally lead to them develop more sceptical attitudes towards all evidence. • Perhaps teachers should be given evidence whose quality has already been judged, rather than asking them to assess the quality of evidence • Educators need more advanced approaches to disseminate evidence