Classroom-based Research into Raising Standards

This study took place over three academic years in 12 schools (six experimental and six comparison schools) and compared the Optima Reading Programme with schools adopting traditional methods to teach reading prior to the introduction of the National Literacy Strategy...

This study took place between over three academic years in 16 schools and compared the Optima Reading with the National Literacy Strategy (NLS). The results from Study 2 were very similar to those in Study 1. Children made better progress when children were taught...

This study was a one year intervention that compared the impact of Optima Writing and the NLS on children’s writing and spelling. The results indicated that the Optima Writing programme had a significant impact on all measures of children’s creative writing and...

This study ran for a single academic year in six secondary schools (three experimental and three comparison) when students were in Year 7. The experimental group were taught three times a day for 15 minutes by classroom assistants who had been trained through a series...

This study took place over three academic years in five schools (two experimental and three comparison) and compared Optima Maths with the National Numeracy Strategy (NNS). The results indicated that children made significantly better progress in a number of...