The last 20 years have witnessed increased levels of education and female workforce participation in Europe, upward mobility from blue- to white-collar jobs, and an increased focus on the service sector. In response to the economic downturn, European policymakers have focused on improving the general skill level of the workforce to support the development of a knowledge-based economy.
Our research projects help policymakers in Europe and abroad by examining such topics as the importance of early childhood and primary and secondary education (including a number of randomised controlled trials to evaluate targeted interventions in classrooms and schools), and the role of higher education institutions in preparing students for the future.
Teacher shortages could be a real and imminent threat in Cambridgeshire unless more new secondary school teachers are attracted and retained. The region should explore the association between teachers’ working and living conditions, why not enough teachers are attracted to work in Cambridgeshire and why teachers are leaving the profession.
As part of the MOOCs4Inclusion research team, RAND Europe contributed to a literature review to identify recent research on the use of free digital learning by migrants and refugees in the EU and neighbouring countries.
The Department for Education commissioned RAND Europe to provide a statistically robust, unbiased, and consistent approach to account for missing Key Stage 2 data in the LSYPE2 cohort. The final report balances the need for practical solutions for analysts with the desire to exhaustively explore options for dealing with the missing data.
Since 2014, UK Higher Education Funding Councils have used the Research Excellence Framework to assess the quality and impact of a university's research before providing further funding. ImpactFinder helps universities manage their research funding submissions and identify and review impact case studies.
A review of existing literature on defining and demonstrating ‘quality teaching’ and measuring its impact in higher education mainly found opinion pieces based on secondary, documentary analysis rather than rigorous comparison group studies. This was a significant weakness in this field of research.
The Kyra School Alliance seeks to maximise the impact of teachers’ feedback on pupils’ outcome through the use of video. Researchers are conducting an efficiency trial of this intervention along with a process evaluation to understand how the intervention improves pupil outcomes.
Maximising the Impact of Teaching Assistants (MITA) aims to develop ways in which UK teaching assistants can improve students’ outcomes. An efficacy randomised control trial will evaluate whether, under ideal conditions, the programme has a positive impact.
An evaluation recommends that UN agencies, donors, partners, and the Jordanian government develop and implement a strategy to manage the influx and education of child refugees. Jordanian and refugee children both will benefit from expanding the Jordanian education system's safety, quality and performance.
An evaluation of Renaissance Learning's AR scheme will explore whether the programme has a positive effect on the reading comprehension of randomly assigned pupils, particularly those who are eligible for free school meals.
