Evidence Based Education (EBE) was founded in 2015, in the north-east of England. Our fundamental goal is to improve the lives of students. While many personal, family and cultural factors contribute to their outcomes, a large body of research indicates that what teachers do, know and believe matters more to the achievement of students than anything else we can influence. As such, we provide pragmatic, engaging and innovative professional development for teachers and school leaders, in areas crucial to underpinning great teaching, as well as conducting bespoke research and development projects and, more recently, developing tools to help improve the lives of teachers, school leaders and students alike.
Our team is made up chiefly of former teachers and school leaders, as well as leading researchers in the field of education, and works with more than 20,000 teachers in over 900 schools, in the UK and worldwide each year. We were honoured to receive a Queen’s Award for Enterprise in 2019, in the Innovation category, for our work to break the mould of existing professional development practice; we support teacher improvement, recruitment and retention, in a cost-effective, sustained and sustainable way.
EBE’s belief is that continuing professional development (CPD) should be continuing in the truest sense of the word, rather than a series of one-off events that continues throughout a teacher’s career. It should be sustained over time, underpinned by robust evidence and, crucially, prioritised by school leadership.
Our CPD includes collaboration and challenge – both internally and externally – and is practically rooted in what difference it can make in practice, rather than solely being about learning new knowledge. All of our programmes have implementation at their core: what actually changes for students in the classroom?
Building on this work is our most ambitious project yet: the Great Teaching Toolkit (GTT). In June 2020, we published an Evidence Review, summarising the research on what really makes excellent teaching in a digestible and actionable way. It has been downloaded over 40,000 times since.
Off the back of this Evidence Review, we launched the GTT itself in September 2021. At the time of writing (April 2022), more than 12,000 teacher licences have been taken up across more than 300 schools and colleges across our region, the UK and internationally.
At EBE, we specialise in school improvement through research-informed teacher development. Our work to date has led us to create and launch the Great Teaching Toolkit, which is the anchor for all of our CPD services.
How can the GTT help you in your school improvement remit, then? First and foremost, it is anchored in the most robust evidence, as summarised in our Model for Great Teaching. This means that anyone working on something within the GTT can be sure that, by improving their practice, they are likely to have a positive impact on their students’ outcomes.
The GTT helps you and every colleague:
Multiple trusts are already using the GTT as part of their offer across all their schools, and we offer a trust-wide implementation partner, who is on hand to help the central lead and each school’s coordinator, to ensure the GTT is well rolled-out and has the best chance of success. All of these features, and access to our Great Teaching Community, starts at just £49 per teacher for a year.
Aside from the GTT, we have also delivered individual workshops on topics around assessment, evaluation and retrieval practice to trust leaders. Our Research Lead Training offers sustained training for a group of your staff in conducting evaluations within a school setting, building capacity within your teams to work out what is working in their context.
And, finally, led by Professor Rob Coe, our Research and Development Team are experts in assessment design and evaluation, having worked on multiple national contracts in this field. A recent addition to our services is the ability to analyse trust-wide assessments, joining the dots between teacher development and student outcomes, and to offer feedback and consultancy on our findings.
At EBE, we are a small organisation trying to shift the dial towards a more evidence-based, sustained approach to CPD. Our mission is to improve learner outcomes, worldwide and for good, and the best mechanism we have to do that is by supporting schools and trusts to improve the quality of teaching and learning.
We are and have been self-funded from our foundation in 2015. This means two things: firstly, we are very aware of providing great value, as we understand the challenges trusts face with budget. This is why the Great Teaching Toolkit starts from just £49 per teacher per year, representing immense value for that price. Secondly, we understand that what we do simply has to meet the needs of teachers and leaders, schools and trusts. Our focus on teacher-centred design, and on delivering world-class value in our GTT ensure that we never stand still.
Our education team is made up almost exclusively of former teachers and school leaders, from various contexts. As such, we understand deeply the challenges faced by schools and trusts, in terms of both time and money, and we endeavour to deliver world-class professional development in an evidence-based and robust way, but while remaining sensitive to these pressures.
To ensure we are grounded, both in classroom practice and in research, our team is also steered from both sides. We run a stipend "working group” programme for teachers, school leaders and trust leaders, who give us honest feedback on the Great Teaching Toolkit, and how we can improve it to better meet their needs. We also have a voluntary Advisory Board, formed of world-leading academics along with current and former teachers and school leaders. Their job is to ensure we remain true to both our name—so that what we do has the best chance of helping where it matters—and our mission—to improve learner outcomes, worldwide and for good.
In terms of equity of access, the GTT is a commercial product, but we also ensure every teacher can access quality professional development at no cost in a number of ways. Firstly, our free-to-join Resource Library holds a series of ebooks, podcasts and resources that can support great teaching, alongside our blog which explores aspects of great teaching in more depth. Secondly, we have published a pair of freely-available and acclaimed Evidence Reviews, one on Great Teaching, and one on School Environment and Leadership. Thirdly, we have made our GTT starter account freely available, so that every teacher can begin to explore the GTT, and get some useful feedback on their teaching – although some functionality is limited to the paid version, our student feedback tools will remain free for any teacher’s use when they sign up to our starter account.
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Company no: 05303883
Charity no: 1107640
