A team of researchers in the School of Education with Professor Kay Livingston as PI and co-led by Professor Catherine Doherty with Professor Trevor Gale, Dr Stephen Parker, and both Dr Ria Dunkley and Dr Catherine Lido of CR&DALL, all as co-Is, have been commissioned to conduct a study for the British Council to assess the impact of their programmes in Scotland.

The British Council currently work with approximately a third of all schools in Scotland, through their Erasmus+, Connecting Classrooms, eTwinning and Modern Language Assistants programs. The project will involve both quantitative analysis of existing data sets and interviews with principals, teachers and students in differently positioned schools  to evidence and evaluate any impact these programmes are having on curriculum, pedagogy and ultimately achievement levels.  In particular, it will explore whether these programmes contribute to the goals of Scottish Governments’ Attainment Challenge.

One of the main contribution from the CR&DALL team will be the use of an extensive dataset supplied by the Scottish Government on school pupils gathered from its contribution to the Education, Place and Disadvantage project within the Urban Big Data Centre, details of which are found at this link.