Last weekend, Joe Nutt expressed his concerns that the task ahead of the 22 research schools was too difficult for them to succeed. In one respect he was right: navigating the complex education research landscape is not easy.

Until quite recently, academic research did little to support teachers to improve outcomes for their pupils. Even if you could wade through the “quagmire” of papers and journals of varying quality, there were few mechanisms in place to help you share what you had learnt with other schools.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has done much to change this. Resources like the Teaching and Learning Toolkit present high-quality evidence summaries in language that’s meaningful to teachers: the average impact of an approach on attainment; its cost; and the strength of the evidence supporting it.

But we know that giving schools access to evidence just isn’t enough. The really tricky bit is supporting schools to use evidence in ways that really make a difference in the classroom.

This is where the 22 research schools come in. Their primary purpose is to support schools to become more evidence-informed without having to spend years “accumulating the kind of sophisticated research literacy” that Nutt is worried about.

While research schools are funded by the EEF, the Institute for Effective Education (IEE) and the Department for Education’s Opportunity Areas programme, we also generate income ourselves by the training programmes and other support services we offer.

So what does a research school actually do?

It might be easier to start with what we don’t do. We don’t expect busy teachers to carry out research in their schools (although we have helped schools to evaluate the impact of innovations that they have trialled in their schools). Teachers simply haven’t got the time for this and much of the research around key topics like metacognition has already been done on a much bigger scale and under fairer conditions than could be hoped for in a school setting.

Durrington became a research school in September 2017. Since then, we have worked with 802 teachers and leaders, from 170 schools in West Sussex, East Sussex, Hampshire, Kent, Surrey, London, Cambridgeshire, Essex and further afield. As a research school, our purpose is to know the research, filter it and then help schools to think about how they could implement it. We do this in two main ways: communication and training.  

Communication

A key part of our work is communicating to schools the most useful research evidence. We post regular website articles and send out a monthly newsletter to our network of schools.  We also hold half-termly meetings for research leads at the schools in our network to share information about the research school and other local training and events. We’ve found twilight sessions are a great way of sharing information too.

While we know this alone won’t usually be enough to change practice, it’s helping to raise awareness of the evidence and the growing number of opportunities that are out there.

Training

We offer a varied training programme based on the most topical and relevant themes for the schools in our network. The courses are underpinned by the latest research into teacher development which shows that the most effective CPD does not consist of one-off events.

Our training programmes are spread across the year in three full-day sessions. Each day has a very specific focus: exploring the problem and becoming a critical user of evidence; deepening understanding; implementation and planning for implementation.

At the start of the programme, delegates identify a focus by thinking carefully about their own context (either at a personal level or organisational level) and identifying a specific issue to address. They are then supported to think about, plan and evaluate how this will be implemented back at their school, shaped by the best available research evidence.

In Nutt’s article, he questions whether research schools are best placed to do this. We were all appointed because of the research literacy of key staff and because we had previous experience of developing a more evidence-informed approach as a school. Another key selection criteria for research schools was our experience of supporting other schools to work with the research evidence. This means we can confidently work alongside schools as they look to start mobilising the research evidence themselves. 

As a network of schools, we have access to colleagues from the EEF and IEE who provide us with first class training on the evidence - how it was derived, what it means and what the key points are for teachers and leaders. We also make sure that all of our training programmes are developed collaboratively across the network, to ensure high-quality content and delivery.

There seems to be a real momentum within education to embrace the research evidence and use it to inform the decisions we make as school leaders, in order to ensure that the learning of our young people is shaped by what is most likely to work.

We know the challenge ahead of us is not going to be easy, but I think I speak for all research schools when I say we’re more than up for it.

Shaun Allison is director of Durrington Research School. He tweets as @shaun_allison