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Improving attainment across a whole district: school reform through peer tutoring in a randomized controlled trial

Tymms, P.; Merrell, C.; Thurston, A.; Andor, J.; Topping, K.; Miller, D.

Improving attainment across a whole district: school reform through peer tutoring in a randomized controlled trial Thumbnail


Authors

C. Merrell

A. Thurston

J. Andor

K. Topping

D. Miller



Abstract

Districts are an important unit for administrative purposes, but they vary little in their impact on students' attainment, at least in the UK. Further, government attempts to raise attainment are often disappointing. The project described in this article aimed to engage schools in reform to change students' attainment and attitudes in schools across a whole district. The intervention, peer tutoring, has a good research pedigree in small-scale studies, but scaling it up to district-level implementation has not been rigorously evaluated. Over 2 years, 129 elementary schools in 1 Scottish district were randomly assigned to different interventions. The implementation was not perfect, but the results were positive with respect to cross-age tutoring, which had effect sizes of about 0.2. Despite limitations, the study demonstrates that it is possible to carry out a clustered randomized controlled trial (RCT) on a large scale working with districts and suggests that peer tutoring has promise when scaled up.

Citation

Tymms, P., Merrell, C., Thurston, A., Andor, J., Topping, K., & Miller, D. (2011). Improving attainment across a whole district: school reform through peer tutoring in a randomized controlled trial. School Effectiveness and School Improvement, 22(3), 265-289. https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2011.589859

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Mar 12, 2011
Online Publication Date Jul 27, 2011
Publication Date Sep 1, 2011
Deposit Date Jul 6, 2011
Publicly Available Date Nov 8, 2011
Journal School Effectiveness and School Improvement
Print ISSN 0924-3453
Electronic ISSN 1744-5124
Publisher Taylor and Francis Group
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 22
Issue 3
Pages 265-289
DOI https://doi.org/10.1080/09243453.2011.589859
Public URL https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1530156

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Copyright Statement
This is an electronic version of an article published in Tymms, P. and Merrell, C. and Thurston, A. and Andor, J. and Topping, K. and Miller, D. (2011) 'Improving attainment across a whole district : school reform through peer tutoring in a randomized controlled trial.', School effectiveness and school improvement., 22 (3). pp. 265-289.
School effectiveness and school improvement is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/openurl?genre=article&issn=0924-3453&volume=22&issue=3&spage=265






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