Working Out What Works - The Case of the Education Endowment Foundation in England

Oct 15, 2026

This article provides an overview of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) as a leading What Works organization, summarizing its successes and lessons learned. It traces the EEF’s history and details key components of its evidence journey, including evidence-generation methods, challenges, and practical learning. The EEF is shown to expand school-based randomized controlled trials (RCTs) rapidly, maintain high standards for independence and transparency, and produce new impact evidence. It also highlights the need for alternative designs, scalable testing, and clear reporting and interpretation of findings.

LanguageEnglish

CategoryResearch & Report

FormatPDF

Pages19

Reading Time48 min

AccessFree to download

Abstract

Introduction

Evidence-based educational reform waves

Case focus: EEF in England

A brief history of the EEF

Working Out What Works: The Case of the Education Endowment Foundation in England Triin Edovald and Camilla Nevill The Education Endowment Foundation ECNU Review of Education 2021, Vol. 4(1) 46–64 ª The Author(s) 2020 Article reuse guidelines: [sagepub.com/journals-permissions](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[ ](sagepub.com/journals-permissions)[DOI: 10.1177/2096531120913039](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120913039)[ ](DOI: 10.1177/2096531120913039)[journals.sagepub.com/home/roe](journals.sagepub.com/home/roe) Abstract Purpose: This article gives an overview ofthe successes and lessons learned to date of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), one of the leading organizations of the What Works movement. Design/Approach/Methods: Starting with its history, this article covers salient components of the EEF’s unique journey including lessons learned and challenges in evidence generation. Findings: The EEF has demonstrated that it is feasible to rapidly expand the use of school-based randomized controlled trials (RCTs) in a country context, set high standards for research independence, transparency, and design, and generate new evidence on what works. Challenges include the need to consider alternative designs to RCTs to answer a range of practice-relevant questions, how to best test interventions at scale, and how study findings are reported and interpreted. Originality/Value: This article addresses some of the key components required for the success of What Works organizations globally. Keywords Education, evaluation, evidence, impact, randomized controlled trials, teaching Date received: 22 October 2019; accepted: 18 January 2020 Corresponding author: Triin Edovald, The Education Endowment Foundation, 5th Floor, Millbank Tower, 21–24 Millbank, London SW1P 4QP, UK. Email: [triin.edovald@eefoundation.org.uk](triin.edovald@eefoundation.org.uk) Creative Commons Non Commercial CC BY-NC: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 License ([https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/)) which permits non-commercial use, reproduction and distribution of the work without further permission provided the original work is attributed as specified on the SAGE and Open Access pages ([https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage](https://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/open-access-at-sage)). Introduction The articles in this issue focus on a general introduction to evidence-based educational reform indifferent countries and the effectiveness of evidence-based education reforms. There have been various identifiable waves in the process of evidence revolution in education with the 2010s characterized by attempts to institutionalize the use of evidence through the emergence of knowledge brokering agencies, most notably the What Works movement in the U.S. and the UK (White, 2019) . This article focuses on the case of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in England and presents an internal perspective on the work of the EEF in generating, documenting, and promoting the use of high-quality evidence and evaluation to inform teaching and other school practices, for transfer and possible adaptation in other contexts. The article gives a brief overview of the EEF’s history, discusses the successes and lessons learned so far, followed by a discussion on the challenges faced primarily from the perspective of evidence generation. A brief history of the EEF Inspired by the Obama administration’s Race to the Top initiative in the U.S. (U.S. Department of Education, 2009), the UK Secretary of State for Education, Michael Gove announced in late 2010 plans to establish an EEF to help raise standards in challenging schools in England (Department for Education and The RT Hon Michael Gove MP, 2010) . The EEF was founded in 2011 by a lead charity, The Sutton Trust, in partnership with Impetus, with a £125 million founding gran

FAQs

What is the main purpose of the article?

To overview the Education Endowment Foundation’s successes and lessons learned within the What Works movement, including how it generates and promotes high-quality evidence.

What methods and approach does the article describe?

It outlines the EEF’s history and discusses its evidence-generation journey, emphasizing research independence, transparency, and the use of randomized controlled trials (RCTs), along with challenges in producing evidence.

What challenges are highlighted regarding evidence generation?

The article notes the need for alternative designs beyond RCTs for practice-relevant questions, effective testing of interventions at scale, and improved reporting and interpretation of study findings.

Oct 15, 2026

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