Becky Francis, born in Keynsham, England, has devoted her career to researching the impact of socioeconomic inequality on student achievement. At 52, she is the executive director of the prestigious British foundation Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and has been an advisor to the so-called select committee on education of the House of Commons since 2015. Her obsession is to ensure that all British public schools (there, only 7% of students go to private) base their work method in practices designed from evidence. He acknowledges that some widespread inertias that have raised blisters in public debate, such as homework, have not presented “considerable” improvements in performance in the case of primary school.
His organization has analyzed more than 2,500 studies carried out in different countries on educational methodologies and has conducted more than 200 investigations in half of the schools and institutes in England (about 16,000) in the last ten years. With all the evidence extracted, the EEF has launched a telematics tool called Teaching and learning toolkit (too, in Spanish) which shows the assessment of different educational practices based on their effectiveness and cost, such as grouping students by performance levels within the classroom or collaborative learning.
Last week Francis participated in a workshop with primary, secondary and university teachers at CaixaForum Madrid on the use of educational evidence as a key element for transformation, where he answered questions from this newspaper.
Ask. Of all the evidence they have found, there is one that is especially related to learning loss caused by covid-19. Could you tell us details of the call metacognition and self-regulation methodology.
Answer. It is a very interesting practice that allows students to achieve progress of an additional seven months on average. It is to help you reflect on your own learning by teaching you strategies for planning, monitoring, and evaluating your study methods. Evidence indicates that this encourages discipline and creates study habits, especially when it begins at an early age, as it affects atorregulation. It has also been found to be more effective with older students and to improve understanding of subjects that require a high level of abstraction such as mathematics or physics.
P. In contrast, homework, which has been the subject of disagreement between families and schools for years, does not seem to have direct effects on performance in the primary stage.
R. We don’t just focus on demonstrating things that work, we also tear down the ones that don’t. Sometimes trends are created in education that do not have a solid foundation. From the results of our research, it cannot be deduced that homework in primary school by themselves can affect performance improvement. It is not clear if this pedagogical strategy has anything to do with academic success. The data are more supportive of its usefulness in secondary education, but there is much less evidence of benefits in primary education. Also, the benefits are modest if homework is asked consistently. It is not about sending them a lot of homework, but about being aware of the student’s profile, what works best with him. You have to consider, for example, whether it makes more sense to order more repetitive or more creative exercises.
P. What does it mean that there is evidence behind a methodology?
R. We focus on shedding light on what are the best practices in the classroom and how schools should best spend their budget. EEF’s mission is to reduce the gap between students from more depressed socioeconomic backgrounds and those with more resources in relation to their academic results. For this we focus on research, what the evidence says, what is effective. It is a fairly new approach because other research has not focused on examining pedagogy within the classroom.
P. When evaluating students’ progress, do you take their exam grades as a reference?
R. We track your progress and our benchmark is national standardized test results – that’s the indicator. We have worked with half of the schools in England, some 16,000 primary and secondary schools have participated in the research, about 1.7 million people in the last 10 years. We have conducted nearly 200 studies in the UK with the collaboration of some universities that have helped us with the assessments. There is no similar precedent in the country. In addition, we have cross-checked our results with data from 2,500 other international experiments and meta-analyzes.
P. How do you work at the classroom level with the schools?
R. We have 40 researcher schools, which are educational centers that act as a kind of research laboratories. They have no distinctive traits, just a community of teachers committed to educational innovation. They share with us their concerns, their pedagogical needs and are reference centers for teachers who leave the university and are in the internship period. We believe that it is essential that new batches of teachers start their careers basing their methods on evidence. In addition, we have a team of professors and researchers who can advise any center on how to put into practice the evidence of the toolkit in class, with practical examples. 70% of school leaders in England say they already consult our website to guide their classes. We have to give prestige to the teaching career as it happens with medicine or law, and that is achieved with evidence.
P. He has been advising the British Government on educational matters for years. Is it difficult for you to base your policies on that evidence?
R. We are not naive enough to think that we can escape the ideological lines of each party, but in the UK we can boast that the Government is committed to the evidence when directing its policies. For example, the national school reinforcement program approved after the pandemic is based on our recommendations. The same happens with a new plan for the development of language at an early age in children in vulnerable situations, who have been particularly affected by confinement.
P. Is excellence compatible with equity?
R. The challenge is to make each of the public schools excellent. Middle-class families always have sufficient financial resources to find a way to enter the considered best schools, even if they consider a private one to be a better option, they have the capital to do so. That would dissolve inequality in access. The British model is not elitist, in fact the so-called grammar schools, which are the ones that select students based on their abilities when they are 11 years old, they are a minority, they began to disappear in the seventies. Most centers follow a comprehensive model – one that does not divide children according to their abilities and the academic path that fits each one – up to the age of 16, as do the Scandinavian countries or Canada. That model is the one that generated a class society, but we are no longer in that.
P. Your program is overly grading and it has been shown that students from families with fewer resources may have a more difficult time achieving good results.
R. Grades are one of the greatest predictors of success throughout life, especially in the workplace. That is why we focus our study on which methodologies have the most impact on academic performance. It is of crucial importance. I don’t think we should have the expectation that schools take on the role of social services. Governments have to focus on policies to compensate for inequalities in other areas, such as compensation through taxes or other social programs. Society has to function on the principle that students will have the necessary conditions to be able to continue their studies normally. Families that cannot do so are a minority compared to most working-class families.
P. Do you think that content is more important than skills?
R. This dualism has been exaggerated in public debate. Knowledge-based learning always has to be there, we know it is necessary to progress at any level. Even for a minijob (in Spanish, precarious employment). To work in a store, calculation and reading comprehension are essential, whatever your path. Likewise, if you want to continue your studies and go to University, your grades in your discipline are very important. Regarding competencies, a good teacher has the necessary capacity to put teamwork, leadership or resilience into practice among their students. Let’s not underestimate the value of the content.
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