The Campbell Collaboration is a nonprofit organization that promotes evidence-based policymaking through the production of systematic reviews, summaries and syntheses of policy-relevant evidence. Each post in this series includes excerpts from the Campbell Collaboration’s “Plain Language Summaries” in the subject areas of crime & justice, education, and social welfare.
1. Small class sizes for improving student achievement in primary and secondary schools Authors: Trine Filges, Christoffer Scavenius Sonne-Schmidt, and Bjørn Christian Viinholt Nielsen. Published: October 11, 2018; Subject Area: Education.
This Campbell systematic review examines the impact of class size on academic achievement. The review summarises findings from 148 reports from 41 countries. Ten studies were included in the meta-analysis.
Reducing class size is seen as a way of improving student performance. But larger class sizes help control education budgets. The evidence suggests at best a small effect on reading achievement. There is a negative, but statistically insignificant, effect on mathematics, so it cannot be ruled out that some children may be adversely affected.
Class size reduction is costly. The available evidence points to no or only very small effect sizes of small classes in comparison to larger classes. Moreover, we cannot rule out the possibility that small classes may be counterproductive for some students.
Full Report: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.4073/csr.2018.10
2. School-based interventions for reducing disciplinary school exclusion Authors: Sara Valdebenito, Manuel Eisner, David P. Farrington, Maria M. Ttofi, and Alex Sutherland. Published: January 9, 2018; Subject Areas: Crime and Justice, Education
[Note: “School exclusion” is British English. “Expulsion” is the more common American term].
School exclusion is associated with undesirable effects on developmental outcomes. It increases the likelihood of poor academic performance, antisocial behaviour, and poor employment prospects. This school sanction disproportionally affects males, ethnic minorities, those who come from disadvantaged economic backgrounds, and those with special educational needs.
Interventions to reduce school exclusion are intended to mitigate the adverse effects of this school sanction. This review assesses the effectiveness of programmes to reduce the prevalence of exclusion. The review summarises findings from 37 reports covering nine different types of interventions.
School-based interventions cause a small and significant drop in exclusion rates during the first six months after intervention (on average), but this effect is not sustained. Interventions seemed to be more effective at reducing some types of exclusion such as expulsion and in-school exclusion.
Four intervention types – enhancement of academic skills, counselling, mentoring/ monitoring, and skills training for teachers – had significant desirable effects on exclusion. However, the number of studies in each case is low, so this result needs to be treated with caution.
Full Report: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.4073/csr.2018.1
3. Later school start times for supporting the education, health and well-being of high school students Authors: Robert Marx, Emily E Tanner-Smith, Colleen M Davison, Lee-Anne Ufholz, John Freeman, Ravi Shankar, Lisa Newton, Robert S Brown, Alyssa S Parpia, Ioana Cozma, and Shawn Hendrikx. Published: December 19, 2017; Subject Area: Education
The review summarises findings from 17 reports of 11 unique interventions in six countries…with 297,994 participants.
Later school start times appear to increase sleeping time. Some of the studies suggest there may be a positive association between later school start times and academic and psychosocial outcomes. The evidence on absenteeism and student alertness is mixed. However, the quality of the evidence and comparability of studies is low.
There appear to be some positive effects from later start times, but the evidence base is too weak to have confidence in the findings. Additional research is needed.
Full Report: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.4073/csr.2017.15