Developing children and young people’s participation in strategic processes: the experience of the Children’s Fund Initiative

The extent of children’s and young people’s participation activities has increased considerably among statutory, voluntary and community sector organisations across the UK in recent years. The Children’s Fund, a major government initiative launched in 2000, represents a systematic drive towards promoting children and young people’s participation in planning, implementing and evaluating preventative services within all 149 local authority areas in England. Based on research carried out by the National Evaluation of the Children’s Fund, this paper explores the experience of Children’s Fund partnerships of engaging children and young people in strategic processes.

The Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL): a retrospective, intrinsic case study of the process of policy into practice and its impact on teacher participants

The research reported here is a retrospective case study of the recent (2010) introduction of the Masters in Teaching and Learning (MTL) as a post-graduate level programme of professional development for teachers. It contributes to the debate and research over the past two decades about the impact of post-graduate professional development and appropriate ways of delivering it. The study is located within an extensive body of literature dealing with the importance of the teaching profession with regard to the success of schools and pupils and the impact of professional development on teaching quality and of teaching quality on attainment. A further relevant context is the ongoing tension between the teaching profession and academics on the one hand and government and political actors on the other, in respect of the approaches to professional development and to the control of educational processes. The research questions which inform the study deal with the perspectives of various participants – policy makers, programme directors, coaches and teachers studying for the MTL – on the extent to which the MTL is likely to have an ameliorative effect on teaching and pupil attainment, their experiences of the process of policy development and their experiences as course participants. The study adopts a case study approach which involves elite interviews with those responsible for the development and implementation of the MTL, questionnaires completed by MTL course participants and a comparison group taking a conventional MA and in depth interviews with participants and coaches. The results revealed tensions and difficulties associated with the development of the MTL including uneasy relationships between HE institutions and government agencies, ideas about ‘producer capture’, the relevance of the MBA model and concern over the role of coaches. However, while acknowledging various difficulties and some misconceived expectations they viewed its potential to meet its expressed aims positively, given time. Course participants were positive about their experience of the MTL and felt that it had contributed to many aspects of their professional development. Most saw it as a positive experience despite the variable quality of support from their schools, particularly in the form of the school-based coach the concept of which had been heralded as the bellwether of the MTL. It was striking that the responses of the MTL participants were very similar to those of teachers taking a conventional MA. A finding which would repay further investigation is that while the great majority of course participants felt that the MTL (and the MA) had contributed to their becoming more effective teachers they were much less confident that it had contributed to increased pupil attainment.

Developing responsive preventative practices: key messages from children's and families' experiences of the Children's Fund

As part of the prevention and social inclusion agenda, the Children's Fund, set up in 2000, has developed preventative services for children at risk of social exclusion. Drawing on a large qualitative dataset of interviews conducted in 2004/05 with children, young people and their parents/carers who accessed Children Fund services, this article analyses key practices and approaches valued by children and parents. These included: specialist support tailored to individual support needs, family-oriented approaches, trusting relationships with service providers, multi-agency approaches and sustainability of services. Finally, the article draws out key lessons for the future development of preventative services.

Shaping literacy in the secondary school: policy, practice and agency in the age of the national literacy strategy

This article examines the definitions of literacy in operation in secondary schools, and the relationship between official literacy policy and the practices of the agents responsible for implementing this policy. We trace the history of national policy back to the Language Across the Curriculum movement of the 1970s as it provides an illustrative point of comparison with the first five years of the National Literacy Strategy. Drawing on empirical data which illuminate the views, perceptions and practices of key agents on a number of levels, we critically review the concept of 'school literacy' promoted in government policy, defining it as 'school-centric literacy' and question its ability to facilitate participation in the practices associated with the media and technological literacies which are increasingly a feature of school life. There is evidence of some unplanned effects of the current national policy but also that levels of agency, for literacy teachers in particular, may be rapidly diminishing.

Childhood obesity: should primary school children be routinely screened? A systematic review and discussion of the evidence

Background: Population monitoring has been introduced in UK primary schools in an effort to track the growing obesity epidemic. It has been argued that parents should be informed of their child's results, but is there evidence that moving from monitoring to screening would be effective? We describe what is known about the effectiveness of monitoring and screening for overweight and obesity in primary school children and highlight areas where evidence is lacking and research should be prioritised. Design: Systematic review with discussion of evidence gaps and future research. Data sources: Published and unpublished studies ( any language) from electronic databases ( inception to July 2005), clinical experts, Primary Care Trusts and Strategic Health Authorities, and reference lists of retrieved studies. Review methods: We included any study that evaluated measures of overweight and obesity as part of a population-level assessment and excluded studies whose primary outcome measure was prevalence. Results: There were no trials assessing the effectiveness of monitoring or screening for overweight and obesity. Studies focussed on the diagnostic accuracy of measurements. Information on the attitudes of children, parents and health professionals to monitoring was extremely sparse. Conclusions: Our review found a lack of data on the potential impact of population monitoring or screening for obesity and more research is indicated. Identification of effective weight reduction strategies for children and clarification of the role of preventative measures are priorities. It is difficult to see how screening to identify individual children can be justified without effective interventions.

A systematic review of the routine monitoring of growth in children of primary school age to identify growth-related conditions

Objectives: To clarify the role of growth monitoring in primary school children, including obesity, and to examine issues that might impact on the effectiveness and cost-effectiveness of such programmes. Data sources: Electronic databases were searched up to July 2005. Experts in the field were also consulted. Review methods: Data extraction and quality assessment were performed on studies meeting the review's inclusion criteria. The performance of growth monitoring to detect disorders of stature and obesity was evaluated against National Screening Committee (NSC) criteria. Results: In the 31 studies that were included in the review, there were no controlled trials of the impact of growth monitoring and no studies of the diagnostic accuracy of different methods for growth monitoring. Analysis of the studies that presented a 'diagnostic yield' of growth monitoring suggested that one-off screening might identify between 1: 545 and 1: 1793 new cases of potentially treatable conditions. Economic modelling suggested that growth monitoring is associated with health improvements [ incremental cost per quality-adjusted life-year (QALY) of pound 9500] and indicated that monitoring was cost-effective 100% of the time over the given probability distributions for a willingness to pay threshold of pound 30,000 per QALY. Studies of obesity focused on the performance of body mass index against measures of body fat. A number of issues relating to human resources required for growth monitoring were identified, but data on attitudes to growth monitoring were extremely sparse. Preliminary findings from economic modelling suggested that primary prevention may be the most cost-effective approach to obesity management, but the model incorporated a great deal of uncertainty. Conclusions: This review has indicated the potential utility and cost-effectiveness of growth monitoring in terms of increased detection of stature-related disorders. It has also pointed strongly to the need for further research. Growth monitoring does not currently meet all NSC criteria. However, it is questionable whether some of these criteria can be meaningfully applied to growth monitoring given that short stature is not a disease in itself, but is used as a marker for a range of pathologies and as an indicator of general health status. Identification of effective interventions for the treatment of obesity is likely to be considered a prerequisite to any move from monitoring to a screening programme designed to identify individual overweight and obese children. Similarly, further long-term studies of the predictors of obesity-related co-morbidities in adulthood are warranted. A cluster randomised trial comparing growth monitoring strategies with no growth monitoring in the general population would most reliably determine the clinical effectiveness of growth monitoring. Studies of diagnostic accuracy, alongside evidence of effective treatment strategies, could provide an alternative approach. In this context, careful consideration would need to be given to target conditions and intervention thresholds. Diagnostic accuracy studies would require long-term follow-up of both short and normal children to determine sensitivity and specificity of growth monitoring.

The persistence of real estate fund performance

This paper examines the short and long-term persistence of tax-exempt real estate funds in the UK through the use of winner-loser contingency table methodology. The persistence tests are applied to a database of varying numbers of funds from a low of 16 to a high of 27 using quarterly returns over the 12 years from 1990 Q1 to 2001 Q4. The overall conclusion is that the real estate funds in the UK show little evidence of persistence in the short-term (quarterly and semi-annual data) or for data over a considerable length of time (bi-annual to six yearly intervals). In contrast, the results are better for annual data with evidence of significant performance persistence. Thus at this stage, it seems that an annual evaluation period, provides the best discrimination of the winner and loser phenomenon in the real estate market. This result is different from equity and bond studies, where it seems that the repeat winner phenomenon is stronger over shorter periods of evaluation. These results require careful interpretation, however, as the results show that when only small samples are used significant adjustments must be made to correct for small sample bias and second the conclusions are sensitive to the length of the evaluation period and specific test used. Nonetheless, it seems that persistence in performance of real estate funds in the UK does exist, at least for the annual data, and it appears to be a guide to beating the pack in the long run. Furthermore, although the evidence of persistence in performance for the overall sample of funds is limited, we have found evidence that two funds were consistent winners over this period, whereas no one fund could be said to be a consistent loser.