Research and insights

During National Careers Week in the UK, Mark De Backer, EDT’s Deputy Director for Young People’s Services, considers whether 2024 could be the year that England shapes its careers system’s future. While there have been promising steps forward in shaping England’s careers provision in recent years, there remain significant opportunities for improvement.

High-quality early years education – in the first five years of life – is a hugely important foundation for lifelong learning and behaviour. An increasing number of governments around the world are recognising its importance and are reorientating their understanding of early years provision to focus on not just childcare, but more on early education. Here, we consider this growing interest and the importance of high-quality training and development for early years educators in optimising their environments and thereby giving children a strong start in life.

The Cambodian government has been successful in raising girls’ enrolment and academic achievement in recent years, with girls’ enrolment reaching 100% in 2021 and girls outperforming boys in reading, writing and mathematics at Grade 5 level. While this is hugely encouraging for girls’ education in the country, these statistics alone do not help us to understand the extent to which gender imbalances are being addressed and improved within the classroom.

What impact does climate change have on education, especially in areas which are vulnerable to climate disasters and extreme weather events? In this report, we explore the impact of climate change on schools and learning in six counties in Kenya (Nairobi, Mombasa, Turkana, Tana River, Kwale and Kilifi).

Our fifth Annual Impact Review reveals phenomenal growth in the reach and impact of our programmes to improve education across the world. The report – focusing on the year to September 2023 – shows how we have engaged with more teachers, leaders and education systems internationally than ever before and improved outcomes and experiences for learners.

At the end of 2022, there were 108.4 million forcibly displaced persons. Among these are 35.5 million refugees, over half of whom are children. Effective management of teachers is central to ensuring inclusive, equitable, and quality education for these children and young people, as teaching quality constitutes the most important factor affecting students’ learning. This report, the final in a series of country reports, investigates teacher management in refugee contexts in Uganda. It contributes to a burgeoning body of evidence about teachers in refugee contexts and aims to provide policy guidance to support ministries of education.

Lifelong learning – learning beyond compulsory schooling – can be an important factor in enhancing an individual’s employability and personal development, as well as social inclusion and active citizenship. As part of Lifelong Learning Week, this article examines the connection between lifelong learning and careers guidance.

In the ever-evolving landscape of education, technology has become an integral part of the learning process. Whether in traditional classrooms or virtual environments it can be easy to forget that the brain is always there – doing what it has done for millions of years. If we are going to make instruction design as effective as possible and embrace the full potential of edtech to enhance learning experiences, it is important for us to understand how the brain functions and apply principles from the biology of learning and cognitive psychology to create effective learning materials.

In response to concerns over youth unemployment, skills mismatches and gender labour market segmentation and in alignment with the Ministry of Education's Education Sector plan (2018-22) and the National Strategy for Human Resources Development (2015-25), the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan is experimenting with new approaches to career guidance in partnership with the UK-based Education Development Trust (EDT).

Education Development Trust collaborated with the Ministry of Education Jordan, INJAZ and Education for Employment (EFE) to co-develop and pilot a whole-school careers education and guidance education intervention in Jordan. The intervention was built in alignment with Jordan’s Education Sector Plan (2018–2022) and their National Strategy for Human Resources Development (2015–2025). Future Ready is a whole-school and community model that takes into consideration the internal and external factors that affect young people’s processes of decision-making regarding their futures.

Tutoring is widely acknowledged as an effective means of addressing learning gaps, and has become increasingly prominent in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. In this working paper, Dr Wayne Harrison and Professor Steve Higgins of Durham University and the Education Endowment Foundation summarise the latest global evidence about the effective use of tutoring, which together cite over 1,000 robust evaluations, to provide important recommendations for policymakers.

Teacher professional development is complex, and to date, there has been little research about how abilities prior to initial teacher training (ITT) influence early classroom practice. In this report, we draw on our experience of our Future Teaching Scholars programme in England to address this gap. Our analysis summarises a four-year study looking at the ability of assessment centres to predict teacher training candidates’ success in their later teaching practice.