Best Practice

Making their mark

CPD Action research
The badge of ‘research-engaged school’ is appealing recognition for a school’s achievements in research, but what does it mean in practice? Caroline Fisher looks one school’s evidence for the NFER Research Mark.

Using, taking part in and carrying out your own research are core elements of research engagement, but pulling together the evidence to demonstrate this can be a daunting prospect for schools. The Rofft School in Wrexham did just this recently to become the first primary school to receive the NFER Research Mark in recognition of excellence in enquiry-based practice. So what exactly did this involve?

The Rofft School spent 12 months working with Futurelab at NFER on its Enquiring Schools programme. This helped the school to identify their goal (improving vocabulary), agree the success criteria (increased understanding and use of technology), and devise the indicators they would use to measure the impact (see graph, above). 

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