Funding announced for programmes to address the disadvantage gap

The Department for Education is to continue funding the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) with a new grant of £137 million, enabling the charity to continue its role as a central part of the education landscape for at least the next decade.

The EEF will continue to support the Government’s teacher training reforms, whilst expanding activity in the early years. This will include working as the evidence partner for the Early Years Stronger Practice Hubs, which are due to launch in November 2022, to share effective evidence-based practices with local settings to help boost young children’s development.

The Government is also announcing a further £66 million for the next phase of the Accelerator Fund to increase access to high-quality literacy and numeracy programmes in schools over the next three academic years. This forms part of the Government’s commitment to ensuring that any child who falls behind in maths or English will get the support they need to get back on track.

As part of this, the EEF will be given up to £41.5 million to continue to increase its evidence around effective programmes, scale-up existing programmes, and support schools with implementation. Up to £21 million of the funding will also support Maths and English Hubs to roll out high quality programmes to schools.

Over the past decade, the EEF has carried out over 200 evaluations to understand which interventions and approaches are most effective in closing the attainment gap, engaging 23,000 nurseries, schools, and colleges in trials and reaching over 1.8 million children, including 500,000 pupils eligible for free school meals.

This funding for the Accelerator Fund also follows a successful first year of the initiative, in which the EEF supported 20 programmes across more than 1,500 settings, including those in regions that experienced significant learning loss during the pandemic. 

English Hubs and Maths Hubs programmes also helped to deliver programmes to over 5,000 schools, giving them access to phonics and numeracy programmes. These programmes have experienced strong demand and will continue to be rolled out to additional schools as part of ongoing funding announced today. Schools can contact their local hub for more information.

Areas with high proportions of children from disadvantaged backgrounds will continue to be prioritised for the schemes to help level up attainment.

The £137 million re-endowment of the EEF is in addition to around £40 million of remaining funding from the EEF’s original endowment. The £66 million in funding for the next phase of the Accelerator Fund includes up to £41.5 million for the EEF, up to £21 million to Maths and English Hubs, up to £3 million for a procured supplier to provide capability building support to programmes to help them scale-up, and up to £500,000 for an evaluation of the EEF element of the Accelerator Fund programme.