Evaluation of the Orchestrating Numeracy and the Executive Programme

What is the issue?

The 'Orchestrating Numeracy and the Executive' (ONE) Programme is a 12-week intervention consisting of practitioner development and guided play preschool activities to improve children's numeracy and executive functions. Executive functions are a set of skills such as inhibiting actions and distractions, holding information in mind and thinking flexibly, that we know are all essential to early years numeracy skills.

The ONE programme consists of face-to-face training for early years educators, a pack of 25 activity cards and resources to be used with the activities. An initial small-scale evaluation suggests that children whose educators received the ONE training made more progress in numeracy skills and some executive function skills than other children.

How are we helping?

RAND Europe was commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to evaluate the efficacy of the ONE programme on a larger scale. An efficacy trial will be conducted testing the programme under the best possible conditions, involving 150 early years settings and 2,250 children.

The evaluation will explore:

1. the impact that the ONE has on pupil outcomes,
2. how the ONE is implemented and the experiences of those involved in it, and
3. the costs of running the ONE.

The evaluation report will be published in Autumn 2024.

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Additional team member

Fin Oades