Evaluating the impact of complex whole-school interventions (CWSIs) is challenging.
However, what evidence there is suggests that school leadership and other elements of
whole-school contexts are important for pupils’ attainment (Leithwood et al., 2006),
suggesting that interventions aimed at changing these have significant potential to
improve pupil outcomes. Furthermore, strong leadership is likely important for the effective
implementation of many interventions funded by the EEF since even class-level or
targeted programmes are more likely to work best within supportive and effective settings.
We therefore welcome the EEF’s commitment to exploring the issues inherent in
evaluating CWSIs. Developing design and practice for evaluations of this type of
intervention, focusing on the issues of complexity and managing change across a whole
school, increases the scope of projects of which the EEF may confidently fund evaluations.
In this document, we provide key messages for EEF evaluators on how to get the most out
of evaluations of CWSIs, including considerations for both design and implementation. As
far as possible, our suggestions aim to be practical steps that evaluators can implement
immediately. A number of issues, and points 13 and 14 below in particular, require either
further investigation or decisions from the EEF