A study of multi-grade teaching in English primary schools

Multi-grade teaching (i.e. where pupils from different year groups are taught in the same class) is already used in over a quarter of primary schools in England, but with primary pupil numbers falling it seems likely that many more schools will adopt multi-grade teaching as a way of balancing budgets. This 19-month study, which is being undertaken in partnership with National Foundation for Educational Research, will include a research review; exploratory interviews and focus groups; school case studies; a survey; and a scoping study of ways to assess the impact of multi-grade teaching on pupil outcomes.

Investigators: Professor Toby Greany and Dr Mike Collins
Funder: Nuffield Foundation

EEF Regional Partnerships Evaluation

This two and a half year evaluation starts in early 2026 and will be undertaken by a partnership led by the University of Warwick and involving the University of Nottingham and Manchester Metropolitan University. 

Co-investigators: Professor Toby Greany and Dr Mike Collins
Funder: Education Endowment Foundation
Further information: About regional partnerships

The impact of the National College for School Leadership: A quarter-century retrospective analysis

This study will review the impact of the NCSL, which was located on the University’s Jubilee Campus. The research will involve a systematic literature review and scrutiny of relevant documents. There will also be elite interviews with former NCSL staff, and others involved in the college. 

Principal investigator: Professor Tony Bush
Research associate: Dr Derek Glover
Funder: British Educational Leadership, Management and Administration Society (BELMAS)

Lost spaces, untold stories: The vanishing world of experimental adult education

This is a one-year research fellowship exploring the meanings and memories associated with former places and spaces of adult education in the UK, particularly residential adult education. By ‘lost spaces’, I refer to physical sites or locations which were used for pioneering adult education purposes in the past but are no longer in existence or have been repurposed. The overall aim is to map both physical as well as conceptual and teaching spaces, including those identified as residential colleges and others that stood outside this tradition over the course of the last 100 years. Through interviews and archival research, I will chart how their pedagogical and subject-related innovations impacted beyond the life of the building/organisation and where these new movements migrated upon their closure.

Principal investigator: Dr Sharon Clancy
Funder: Leverhulme Trust
Further Information: blog post 

Educating for the future: New locality partnership models to delivery high quality education for all

The LocalED project (2022 - 2024) was designed to test new locality models for the English school system led by local authorities, combined authorities and school led partnerships. Each of the nine localities involved focussed on one of three ‘pilot’ areas:

1. Improving outcomes for vulnerable children
2. Working as a combined authority
3. Strengthening professional accountability.

The overarching question for the evaluation was: What are we learning about leading successful locality working? 

Local leaders worked to forge coherence in terms of how different partners worked together to improve place-based outcomes. Coherence was never ‘done’, so required continuous attention and effort. It was not about tight standardisation or straightjackets. Rather, it was about developing collective moral purpose, a common cause, and integrated ways of working.

The overarching message from the evaluation is that local coherence is critical for successful and inclusive educational systems, and that that coherence can be strengthened through relatively low-cost forms of support and encouragement, as demonstrated by the LocalEd model.

More specific implications include:

• where local leaders take time to focus on granular ‘human stories’ of individual children, and to understand what these examples tell them about fault-lines in their wider systems and support structures for vulnerable children, this can support transformative change.
• where a combined authority works in collaboration with LAs, trusts, schools and wider partners to identify and address gaps in provision and to connect up professionals across boundaries, this can generate economies of scale and stimulate new ways of working.
• where local school partnerships take collective ownership of professional accountability this can help to overcome some of the perverse outcomes that arise from hierarchical accountability systems. 

Principal investigator: Professor Toby Greany
Co-investigator: Dr Susan Cousins
Funder: The Assocation of Education Committees
Report: Forging Local Coherence LocalEd report - January 2025

Sustainable school leadership: Comparing approaches to training, supply and retention of senior school leaders across the UK

Senior school leaders play an essential role in shaping educational experiences and outcomes for children, particularly in the most challenging communities. 

Even before the Covid-19 pandemic, there were concerns that many existing leaders were leaving the profession early, while potential future leaders were often choosing not to apply for headship, due to the pressures and workloads involved. The pandemic has exacerbated these pressures, raising the risk of a headteacher succession crisis. Furthermore, there are challenges in terms of diversity, with certain groups of leaders facing additional barriers to promotion, while schools in the most challenging contexts often face increased recruitment challenges. 

Policy makers across the UK have prioritised actions to enhance the supply, quality and diversity of senior school leaders. These approaches reflect a wider global trend towards defining and promoting a singular interpretation of 'effective' leadership, for example through national headteacher standards and training programmes. But these national frameworks can be problematic, given that individual, school and local needs differ widely. 

This study will develop a deeper understanding of approaches to the training, supply and retention of senior school leaders - in particular headteachers - for primary and secondary schools and will offer a vision for where and how these approaches can be enhanced.

Principal investigators: Profesor Toby Greany and Professor Pat Thomson, University of Nottingham
Co-investigator: Dr Tom Perry, University of Warwick
Senior research fellow: Dr Mike Collins
Funder: ESRC
Further information: Project page

School Leadership and System Governance Impact Project

The Researching Sustainable School Leadership (ReSSLe) project is a three-year (2022 - 2026) mixed methods study being undertaken by Toby Greany, Pat Thomson, Tom Perry and Mike Collins. The research focusses on England, Scotland and Northern Ireland and is exploring how these nations recruit, train and retain school leaders, particularly headteachers and how well these approaches take account of current and future needs.  
The School Leadership and System Governance Impact Project builds on this and wider research, seeking to ensure the research findings are disseminated widely and engage key stakeholders through two strands: 

• Hold three national policy workshops in autumn 2025 to share emerging findings and discuss implications and recommendations
• Bring the findings to life through a creative data visualisation project in partnership with Dr Tom Cowhitt, University of Glasgow. 

Principal investigator: Professor Toby Greany
Funder: Economic and Social Research Council
Further information: Sustainable school leadership project website and University of Nottingham project page 

A UK-Ireland investigation into the statistical evidence-base underpinning adult learning and education policy-making

This project focuses on the use of data from the Learning & Work Institute’s annual Adult Participation in Learning Survey which provides invaluable insights into adult education and learning. The project investigates the data through analysing trends in relation to the relevant social, economic and political critical conjunctures of the past 25 years. Data from APiL is matched to wider social policy insights and to other leading data sources such as PIAAC, the Adult Education Survey and the Labour Force Survey, as well as to policy maker testimony, gathered through interviews.

Principal investigator: Dr Sharon Clancy
Senior Research Fellow: Dr Betul Babayigit
Funder: ESRC
Further information: Project page

Uppsala Centre for Multidisciplinary Studies on Racism

Principal investigator: Martin Myers
Funder: Charity general

Further details coming soon.