We are working in partnership with The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) and NatCen to evaluate the impact of our Making it REAL programme. This evaluation is being funded as part of the Department for Education’s Accelerator Fund which is funding trials of programmes that show promise for increasing pupil attainment.
The programme is being evaluated through a randomised control trial involving 150 early years settings and 900 children in Yorkshire and The Humber. Private, Voluntary and Independent (PVI) settings as well as nursery schools and nursery classes in primary schools will be taking part in the evaluation.
75 settings will be randomly allocated to the treatment group and will receive Making it REAL and 75 settings will be randomly allocated to the control group and will continue with their usual learning and care.
Two practitioners in the treatment group will attend Making it REAL training, deliver home visits to families, deliver literacy events to their settings and attend NCB network meetings.
The evaluation will:
- assess the impact of Making it REAL on children in the treatment group’s early language skills compared to the children in the control group;
- explore how the programme is delivered;
- assess the perceived effects of Making it REAL on practitioners, parents and children in the treatment group.
The evaluation report will be published in Spring 2026.