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Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of the Impact of Educational Interventions on Pupils Eligible for Free School Meals

Ashraf, B.; Singh, A.; Uwimpuhwe, G.; Higgins, S.; Kasim, A.

Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of the Impact of Educational Interventions on Pupils Eligible for Free School Meals Thumbnail


Authors

A. Kasim



Abstract

Meta-analysis is the synthesis of findings from research projects, which enables an estimate of the average or pooled effect across various studies. This study presents findings from the intention to treat analysis for a series of educational evaluations in England using a two stage meta-analysis with standardised outcome data and Individual Participant Data (IPD) meta-analyses. The research estimates the overall impact of educational trials on pupils eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and the attainment gap in literacy and mathematics performance between FSM and non-FSM pupils based on analysis of 88 trials and data from over half a million pupils. For the meta-analyses, frequentist and Bayesian multilevel models were used to estimate the individual and pooled effect size across categories of explanatory variables such as age groups (key stages in England) and aspects of the type of interventions (one-to-one, small group, and whole class). Results indicated that the overall impact of interventions on the literacy outcomes of FSM pupils was positive with a pooled effect size of 0.06 (0.03, 0.08). However, for mathematics, no overall effect on FSM pupils was observed. Analysis of the attainment gap indicated that literacy outcomes for FSM pupils were improved by interventions marginally more than for non-FSM pupils (pooled attainment gap 0.01(-0.01, 0.04)). The risk of bias assessment showed that estimates were consistent across different methodological approaches. Overall, evidence from this study can be used to identify, test and scale educational interventions in schools to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

Citation

Ashraf, B., Singh, A., Uwimpuhwe, G., Higgins, S., & Kasim, A. (2021). Individual Participant Data Meta-analysis of the Impact of Educational Interventions on Pupils Eligible for Free School Meals. British Educational Research Journal, 47(6), 1675-1699. https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3749

Journal Article Type Article
Acceptance Date Jun 21, 2021
Online Publication Date Jul 10, 2021
Publication Date 2021-12
Deposit Date Jun 30, 2021
Publicly Available Date Mar 29, 2024
Journal British Educational Research Journal
Print ISSN 0141-1926
Electronic ISSN 1469-3518
Publisher Wiley
Peer Reviewed Peer Reviewed
Volume 47
Issue 6
Pages 1675-1699
DOI https://doi.org/10.1002/berj.3749

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Publisher Licence URL
http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

Copyright Statement
© 2021 The Authors. British Educational Research Journal published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd on behalf of British Educational Research Association.

This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.






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