Making evidence accessible

For too long, education research lived in an academic ‘secret garden’, accessible only to a select few. To get even a very basic overview of the research around one topic, you would have had to have spent hours – if not days – reading papers, usually presented in inaccessible jargon and hidden in expensive journals. When the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), in partnership with the Sutton Trust, launched the Teaching and Learning Toolkit in 2011, our aim was to change this. We wanted to give research back to schools so we designed it specifically with busy teachers in mind. ‘Best bets’ for improving children's attainment were presented in terms that teachers will immediately understand: the extra months of learning that approaches might lead to during an academic year. Its myth-busting messages immediately caused a stir: reducing class sizes had surprisingly limited impact; different learning styles had no evidential basis; and school uniforms made no differ