“Educational support programmes can effectively reduce learning inequalities”

INTERVIEW

Educational equity is a challenge that requires that the learning opportunities of the most vulnerable pupils should be sped up. The strengthening of schools’ action through educational support proposals that enhance key competences (reading comprehension, mathematics and socioemotional skills), applying evidence-based methods with a real capacity to reduce existing gaps, is one of the ways to contribute to children’s educational success.

This is especially necessary in the present post-pandemic context, in which a decline may be observed in the academic performance of pupils and particularly of those from vulnerable environments. Indeed, this is the reason behind the emergence of the project called “Educational support. Support to speed up educational opportunities”, which is led by Fundació Bofill with the backing of the Spanish Ministry for Inclusion, Social Security and Migrations.

This project has been created to speed up the opportunities for learning of the most vulnerable students, ensuring educational equity in this way. It seeks to strengthen the action of schools through educational support programmes that enhance such key competences as reading comprehension, mathematics and socioemotional skills. These programmes follow evidence-based methods with the aim of creating replicable scientifically validated models.

We spoke with Lídia Climent, the executive director of “Educational support”, to learn more about the project and the three programmes which form it.

How did the initiative for the project arise and why have its three specific proposals been chosen?

“Education support” is a project that seeks to change the way in which we design the educational programmes and policies that speed up and strengthen learning in vulnerable children and young people, for the purpose of ensuring that these programmes and policies are effective, efficient and engaging.

The opportunity to validate what we do by means of an impact evaluation arose with the availability of the European Union’s Next Generation funds and the decision was made to choose the three key skills in school success: reading comprehension (people cannot learn if they don’t understand what they read), mathematical skills (which are necessary to understand the world around us and to make well-founded decisions), and socioemotional skills (because we cannot live a fulfilling life without them).

The project “Educational support” seeks to change the way we design the educational programmes and policies that speed up and strengthen learning in vulnerable children and young people.

For this reason, the project is structured into three programmes: LECXIT, MATH TUTORING and PENTABILITIES, which deal, respectively, with each of these three skills and which are crossed by a research line that validates their effectiveness.

We want to determine whether these programmes, combined with income transfer policies (such as the minimum vital income), have multiplying effects, as is observed in other countries. Consequently, “Educational support” is an initiative that includes research aimed to validate existing public policies and to help to ensure that the public administrations invest funds where they can really have a greater impact on reducing inequalities affecting vulnerable children and young people.

When and how are these programmes to be implemented?

We will be carrying out the three programmes in over 100 primary and secondary schools in Catalonia and in 75 in Andalusia, Ceuta and Melilla in the 2022-2023 school year. This will involve more than 10,000 pupils in a situation of vulnerability between the group of students who will be taking part in any one of the programmes (the treated group) and the pupils who will be helping us to validate the results (the control group).

Our goal is to make proposals that really work and that are validated by scientific evidence.

Once the school year is over, we will carry out a careful study of the results in order to draw conclusions and to determine what works (and what doesn’t!) and how we can apply this knowledge to ensure that the maximum number of children and young people will benefit from it. Our goal is to make proposals that really work and that are validated by scientific evidence, helping the public administrations in this way to invest in what really has an impact and allows the reduction of educational inequity.

The context at the present time makes it more necessary than ever to speed up the opportunities for learning of the most vulnerable students, accompanying this process with effective evidence-based educational support initiatives. To achieve this, what does the “Educational support” proposal seek to do?

Even though teachers diligently accompany the educational process of vulnerable children and young people and despite the fact that schools have various systems for ensuring accompaniment over the course of pupils’ schooling, it is often found that these measures do not suffice to counteract the impact of living in contexts of poverty and inequality.

Vulnerable children and young people present higher school absenteeism rates, which may often lead to early school drop-out or school paths that are less adjusted to their needs or interests. Ensuring equality of opportunities forms the fundamental base for reducing such inequalities and for seeing that all children and young people have access to full and worthy opportunities of education and of life itself.

Through the research we can validate which ideas work and which do not, helping in this way to guide public policies towards proposals that really bring about a social transformation.

We seek to reduce the existing gap and to generate evidence and specific programmes that lead to public policies which invest in these key skills and competences.

All this is especially important in a context in which the school’s equalising function, a key fundamental element in equality of opportunities, is increasingly being altered in the out-of-school sphere, which becomes a space that destabilises equality and augments educational inequality between children and young people according to the socioeconomic vulnerability of their families – families which may or may not be able to afford the required extra support and accompaniment.

“Educational support” seeks to revert this trend, to reduce the existing gap and to generate evidence and specific programmes leading to public policies that invest in these key skills and competences for success at school and in life in general, above all for vulnerable children and young people who do not start off with the same opportunities.

This context is not something exclusive to Catalonia since there are other countries that are also committed to educational support initiatives. Which ones have we used as references?

There have been similar experiences in other countries which show that educational support programmes can effectively reduce the inequalities of access to the educational system and, consequently, ensure that children and young people from vulnerable environments do not suffer yet another discrimination in the educational sphere. When these programmes are combined with income transfer policies (such as the minimum vital income), the effects of these two factors are multiplied. There are some inspiring examples in this respect, such as the national socioeducational reinforcement programmes carried out in the U.K. and the United States:

• In the United Kingdom, the National Tutoring Programme provides highly personalised tutoring and mentoring programmes for students, which are especially designed and implemented to help the most disadvantaged children and young people.
• In the United States there are tutoring programmes for reading and mathematics (Reading Corps, Math Corps) which are carried out through AmeriCorps and are addressed to socially and economically depressed environments.

In Catalonia, one of every four pupils has a low reading level when they complete their primary education and the students who live in a more vulnerable situation are those who are most strongly affected. If we wish to ensure school success, it is urgent to promote measures which favour the development of reading skills, as is the case of LECXIT. What is the key to its success and why has the decision been made to include it in this project?

Fundació Bofill has been committed to reading comprehension for many years. We believe that if children do not understand what they read, it will be hard for them to be successful at school and to live a fulfilling life.

It is known for a fact that if children and young people do not understand what they read, they will find it very difficult to keep up with their studies at school and that this will have a far-reaching impact on their lives. Indeed, this goes to form a social gap and increases the inequality of vulnerable groups as a whole.

What’s more, LECXIT also arouses students’ curiosity and taste for reading, improving in this way other cross-cutting competences in children, such as attention capacity, concentration and creativity. The pleasure of reading and the opening of the spirit to infinite worlds and wonderful possibilities must be accessible to all children, regardless of their socioeconomic situation.

The results of the competence tests administered by the Catalan Ministry of Education at the end of the primary school period reveal a large drop in the mathematics area. How can MATH TUTORING help to improve the learning of mathematics?

MATH TUTORING revolutionises the learning of mathematics with a view to breaking the schemas and prejudices associated with this discipline, highlighting the need to allow all children to achieve basic mathematical competences which will be of use to them at school and in the making of informed decisions in their everyday lives.

Enough with saying that maths are difficult and with accepting that a large part of our students (and especially the vulnerable ones) do not achieve basic competences! This is something that can and must be changed!

By tutoring in small groups and using engaging methods, MATH TUTORING is committed to bringing mathematics closer to pupils, leading them to see the usefulness and applicability of this discipline. At the same time their self-esteem is strengthened and, as they come to develop competences, they gradually lose their fear of mathematics and actually begin to enjoy them.

Mathematics are of key importance for making decisions, for aspiring to jobs that are growing steadily more digitalised and that are more firmly based on STEM skills, and for advancing in many other educational and personal areas. And on top of all this, children and young people discover that they can find enjoyment in maths!

The Covid-19 pandemic has had consequences for people’s mental health. The need to work on socioemotional skills is a priority and, indeed, increasingly more work is being done on these skills in classrooms. PENTABILITIES proposes a new method for broaching this reality. Can you explain to us what it entails?

PENTABILITIES takes on the challenge of developing socioemotional skills in the classroom, integrating them in teachers’ regular programming while creating a common language that facilitates socioemotional communication. This common language makes it possible to begin to work through empathy, active listening and positive feedback, all of which lead students to go about integrating the skills at the same time as they learn to communicate in an open, respectful and assertive way.

The great innovation of PENTABILITIES is that it is not a method that needs to be worked on separately: on the contrary, it can be integrated in all spheres of learning and in all the various educational spaces, from the physical education area to mathematics classes and tutoring. Academic contents do not need to be altered – it suffices for them to be worked in a certain way. Aside from this, PENTABILITIES features an engaging technological tool (consisting in a website and an app) that helps to establish digital ties with young people.

What benefits do schools and students derive from participating in these innovative programmes?

When students find that their skills are improving, they feel more self-assured, they show greater self-esteem and they become capable of interacting more easily with their environment. Consequently, the benefits of the project and of each of its three programmes go beyond the scope of skills because they help to improve the atmosphere of the classroom and develop competences that are of key importance for the rest of the educational activities while strengthening social and family ties as well.

The benefits of the project and of each of its three programmes go beyond the scope of skills because they help to improve the atmosphere of the classroom and develop competences that are of key importance.

In addition, in a flexible way and with the close accompaniment of the project teams, schools can implement state-of-the-art programmes in each of their competences, expanding in this way the range of opportunities offered to pupils while supplementing the excellent educational activity that the schools are already carrying out.

An evaluation is made on completing the three programmes’ implementation period. What does this evaluation involve? And what use is made of its results?

The impact evaluation that we will carry out on the programmes seeks to provide information on their effectiveness. This information should allow us to adjust and improve the programmes for the purpose of making them scalable and consequently suitable for replication in the greatest possible number of primary and secondary schools. The idea is to have them form part of the public policies of education, ensuring access to educational opportunities and the reduction of inequities in this way.

It is a pioneering type of evaluation of educational programmes, helping to provide information that may be of great value in modifying these programmes and improving their effectiveness.

The impact evaluation consists of a comparison of two similar groups of students: one group takes part in the programme while the other does not. In this way, by working with similar starting situations, one may determine what impact the programme has on certain variables such as the improvement of specific competences (reading, mathematics and socioemotional skills), self-esteem, classroom atmosphere, etc. It is a pioneering type of evaluation of educational programmes, helping to provide information that may be of great value in modifying these programmes and improving their effectiveness.

Would you like to know more?

• LECXIT. Seeing to it that no children finish their education without understanding what they read
• MATH TUTORING. Multiplying the chances of educational success
• PENTABILITIES. For the integration of socioemotional skills into the classroom, giving rise to important life skills
• EDUCATIONAL SUPPORT. Support to speed up educational opportunities[MR3]
• YouTube - Playlist of #SuportEducatiu