Using the Craft of Writing to improve pupil attainment in schools

INTERVENTION: Schools will be randomised into either the intervention or the control group. Schools in the intervention group participate in the Craft of Writing (CoW) programme, whereas the control group will continue "business as usual". For the randomisation, blocking will be used to improve cross‐arm comparability of schools and also to improve precision of estimates. There will be four blocks, defined on the basis of class composition by English as an Additional Language (EAL) (high vs. low) and class composition by eligibility for Free School Meals (FSM) (high vs. low). This approach will help to ensure that our treatment and control groups are well balanced in terms of these characteristics, which are likely to be correlated with our outcome measures (EEF, 2015b). High and low EAL and FSM in these definitions will be defined as above and below by the sample median to ensure that block sizes are approximately equal (which may not be the case if we used population, rather than sample, characteristics). Randomisation will be designed to achieve an equal number of schools in each arm (i.e. 60 control and 60 treatment). Each school will be assigned a randomly generated number (setting a stable seed for the random number generation). Schools will be sorted by block and random number and will be assigned to the treatment arm and to the control arm in turn. Randomisation will be carried out by UCL in Stata and the code used to carry out the process will be recorded and reported in the final report. Schools in the intervention group will participate in the Craft of Writing programme. One self‐nominated year 5 teacher in each participating school participates in the training, which will be led by tutors who are professional authors selected by Arvon. This includes two weekend (Friday‐Sunday) ‘Arvon Teachers as Writers’ residentials six months apart. These will comprise workshops and tutorials for teachers led by professional writers, with time and space for writing, plus structured CONDITION: Writing attainment at the end of year 5 ; Not Applicable ; Writing attainment PRIMARY OUTCOME: Writing attainment, assessed using the Writing Assessment Measure (WAM) at the end of the Year 5 school year in 2019. SECONDARY OUTCOME: Writing self‐efficacy, assessed using the Self‐Efficacy for Writing Scale (SEWS) (adapted to ensure age appropriateness) at the end of the Year 5 school year in 2019. INCLUSION CRITERIA: 1. Located in the North West and North East of England (with a small number from London) 2. Agree to provide student data in order that it is possible to apply for data from the National Pupil Database 3. Identify a lead teacher from Year 5 (all children in the teacher's class will participate in the trial) 4. Cooperate with the project and evaluation teams during the trial (further details of these requirements are outlined in the Memorandum of Understanding with Schools) Where possible it will aim to recruit schools that have larger populations of individuals receiving Free School Meals (FSM) than the national average of 15.3 per cent of pupils aged 5‐10 (DfE, 2016).