Welcome to the Raising Achievement web area!
The high cost of school failure and inequity for individuals, and for society more widely is increasingly being recognised across Europe. Raising the achievement of all learners is seen not just as a policy initiative, but also as an ethical imperative.
The ‘Raising the Achievement of All Learners in Inclusive Education’ project (2014-2017) aimed to provide evidence of effective practice in raising achievement and building the capacity of schools and communities to include and support all learners. This work built on the previous Raising Achievement for all Learners (RA4AL) Agency project from 2012.
The key questions for the project were:
- What pedagogical strategies/teaching approaches (e.g. use of ICT, focus on key competences) best support learning and are effective in raising the achievement (academic and social) of all learners?
- How can school leaders best support:
- the development, implementation and monitoring of inputs and processes for raising achievement?
- the participation of learners, parents/carers in the learning process?
- the measurement of all forms of achievement and analysis of outcomes to inform further development?
Participants
The Raising Achievement project involved a range of stakeholders including school leaders, researchers, teachers, parents and learners, as well as local and national policy makers.
The Agency member countries involved in the project were: Austria, Belgium (Flemish and French speaking communities), Croatia, Cyprus, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Malta, Netherlands, Norway, Poland Portugal, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and United Kingdom (England, Northern Ireland, Scotland and Wales).
Project activities and outputs
The project questions were considered in the context of national/local policy and how it can best support learning communities to undertake organisational development and enable school leaders to raise the achievement of all learners - in particular through collaborative approaches. Read more about project activities here.
A range of project outputs have been published to support work to raise the achievement of all learners. These outputs draw on information from the findings of the RA project, relevant work and research in member countries, as well as and other Agency work. They include:
- A project conceptual framework and terminology paper. This paper contains the definitions of key terms and concepts used in the RA project.
- Individual countries' approaches to raising achievement. Information on participating countries' policy and practice for raising achievement was collected via the RA project survey. This information will be available online in the form of 22 detailed individual country reports.
- A project overview report: Raising the Achievement of all Learners in Inclusive Education: Lessons from European Policy and Practice. This report provides an overview of the RA project. It outlines policy and practice in many of the participating Agency member countries. It also discusses the particular challenges that countries raised, with reference to both recent literature and project findings. Finally, it makes some recommendations to address these challenges
- Raising the Achievement of All Learners: a resource to Support Self-Review. This resource includes materials to be used in local level for school self-evaluation and in considering the support needed from the national policy context.
- Raising the Achievement of all Learners in Inclusive Education – Literature Review. This international literature review provides background information to support the development of evidence-based strategies and promote innovation in schools.
- Key Actions for Raising Achievement: Guidance for teachers and leaders. This guidance provides materials which aim to increase the schools' capacity to raise the achievement of all learners. The materials can be used by school leaders and teachers to plan and develop effective leadership approaches as well as quality teaching, learning and assessment strategies at whole-school and classroom levels.
- Raising the Achievement of All Learners in Inclusive Education: Follow-up Study. This report, published in 2019, outlines a programme of work designed to follow up on the Raising Achievement project. It describes the purpose of the follow‑up study, outlines the methodology used and describes the main changes to policy and practice that can be attributed to the project in full or in part, directly or indirectly. Finally, it highlights key learning points from this work for different stakeholder groups in the Raising Achievement project.