Teaching and Learning Toolkit

What is the Toolkit?

The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit provides guidance for teachers and schools on how best to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

Based on a review of the best educational research, the Toolkit is an independent and accessible resource which helps teachers and schools identify the most promising and cost-effective ways to support their pupils.  Existing evidence shows that how money is spent in schools is at least as important as how much is spent.  The Toolkit can be used to inform decision making and to maximise the benefit of school spending.

The Toolkit was commissioned by the Sutton Trust and developed by a team of academics from Durham University led by Professor Steve Higgins in partnership with the Sutton Trust. It is split into individual themes and is summarised in the Toolkit Overview.  As findings from EEF-funded projects and other high-quality research become available, these will be integrated into the Toolkit evaluations.

How should the Toolkit be used?

Like any toolkit, the Teaching and Learning Toolkit will be most effective if used thoughtfully by professionals; our aim is to help teachers and schools make informed decisions based on the best available evidence, not to prescribe particular solutions.  Applying the knowledge in the Toolkit will always be challenging and will require schools and teachers to develop approaches to suit the specific needs and context of their own schools.

Each theme in the Toolkit is scored according to its potential impact on attainment, its cost and the strength of the existing evidence about its impact, i.e. how confident we are about our assessment of its potential.

Impact summary

Potential impact is estimated in terms of the additional months’ progress you might expect pupils to make from a particular approach, using average pupil progress over one year as a benchmark.  These estimates are based on ‘effect sizes’ which allow us to quantify the impact of a particular approach by comparing the performance of pupils who were given the intervention to a control group who were not.

Cost summary

Cost is estimated as the amount it would cost to run an approach in a class of 30 pupils for one year.  As a comparison, the Pupil Premium for 2012-13 is £600 per eligible pupil.

£	Very low: up to £2000 per year per class of 30 pupils, or less than £70 per pupil per year.
££	Low: £2000-£5000 per year per class of 30 pupils, or up to about £170 per pupil per year.
£££	Moderate: over £5k to £15k per year per class of 30 pupils, or up to about £500 per pupil per year.
££££	High: over £15k up to £30k per year per class of 30 pupils, or up to £1000 per pupil.
£££££	Very high: over £30k per year per class of 30 pupils.

Strength of evidence

Strength of evidence is based on the quality and quantity of existing studies.  Priority is given to quantitative data (i.e. measurable performance in tests) and meta-analyses, which synthesise the findings of several similar studies to establish a best estimate of the impact of a given approach.   It should be stressed that the Toolkit cannot guarantee that a given approach will always (or never) work – it can only be used to identify which approaches might be ‘better bets’ than others.

	Quantitative evidence of impact from single studies, but with effect size data reported or calculable. No systematic reviews with quantitative data or meta-analyses located.
	At least one meta-analysis or systematic review with quantitative evidence of impact on attainment or cognitive or curriculum outcome measures.
	2+ rigorous meta-analyses of experimental studies of school age students with cognitive or curriculum outcome measures.
	3+ meta-analyses from well controlled experiments mainly undertaken in schools using pupil attainment data with some exploration of causes of any identified heterogeneity.
	Consistent high quality evidence from 5+ robust and recent meta-analyses where the majority of the included studies have good ecological validity and where the outcome measures include curriculum measures or standardised tests.

Development of the Toolkit

We are keen that the Toolkit be as useful as possible to schools and teachers, so would welcome any feedback or suggestions for improvement.  The Toolkit will be updated regularly as new evidence becomes available from EEF-funded projects and elsewhere.

Additional Information and Downloads

The Toolkit is also available as a downloadable .pdf here.  For more information about how the Toolkit was compiled please see the Technical Appendices which are available here.  A presentation on the Toolkit given by Dr Lee Elliot Major is available here.