The Education Endowment Foundation Toolkit: a house built on sand?: The case of behavioural interventions

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkits (Teaching and Learning Toolkit and Early Years Toolkit) are widely regarded as providing evidence-based advice for school leaders and teachers. Based on easy-read summaries of research evidence of educational interventions, they are designed to aid decision-making by listing the average cost of an intervention, the strength of the evidence reviewed and the impact of implementing the intervention (measured as number of additional months’ pupil progress achieved). This article draws attention to some of the deficits in the approach taken to review synthesis in the Toolkits by examining the data supporting one important subject, behaviour interventions, and the resulting advice provided to educators. A careful analysis suggests that the studies reviewed not only largely lack relevance to the contemporary UK classroom, but also comprise such a wide range of interventions and trial populations that the additional months’ progress calculated from the meta-analysis’ overall effect size is problematic. Comparison with other advice from EEF draws attention to the lack of nuance in the Toolkit guidance. The article concludes that, while the Toolkit appears ‘scientific’ and ‘evidence-based’, it may represent a new kind of ‘science-washing’.