Evaluation of TASC in Schools in the UK

Abstract

During the academic year from September 2005 to July 2006, several follow-up studies were carried out in a wide range of UK primary schools in the local education regions of: Barnsley, Berkshire, Hampshire, Kent, Lincolnshire, and Nottinghamshire. The primary schools included Nursery pupils (3 – 5 yrs), Reception and Key Stage 1 pupils (5 to 7 years) and Key Stage 2 pupils (8 – 11 years). In all, 350 schools supplied their evaluations of the impact of their TASC work: this number of schools contained more than 4,000 teachers with some of the evaluations reflecting on the whole school development, and some of the evaluations reflecting on the work of individual teachers in single classrooms. The evaluations were derived from qualitative teacher and pupil responses to TASC projects carried out by the pupils centring on and developing topics taken from the UK National Curriculum. In addition, a range of quantitative evaluations were carried out based on the assessment levels outlined by the UK National Curriculum guidelines.