Using the Young Journalist Academy to improve pupil attainment in schools
| ISRCTN | ISRCTN14491875 |
|---|---|
| DOI | https://doi.org/10.1186/ISRCTN14491875 |
| Secondary identifying numbers | N/A |
- Submission date
- 17/07/2018
- Registration date
- 24/07/2018
- Last edited
- 15/08/2022
- Recruitment status
- No longer recruiting
- Overall study status
- Completed
- Condition category
- Other
Plain English Summary
Background and study aims
Young Journalist Academy (YJA) is an intervention that establishes journalism programmes or ‘newsrooms’ in primary schools. Primary school pupils, typically in Year 5 (9 to 10 years old), receive training from YJA staff and then develop and lead their own ‘newsrooms’ in their schools. They produce journalistic outputs in various forms over the course of a school year. These outputs could include print, audio or video content, which are published for the school and on the YJA website for a wider audience.
The YJA has been operating in schools since 2008, with the goals of increasing pupil motivation for learning, improving literacy and writing skills and creating interest in journalism.
This study aims to look at the effects of the YJA programme on improving writing skills within Year 5 pupils.
Who can participate?
Approximately 100 state-funded primary schools in England
What does the study involve?
Schools are randomly allocated to either the intervention or control groups. Schools in the intervention group will participate in the YJA programme, whereas schools in control groups will receive no intervention and continue with "business as usual".
All classes from treatment schools will participate in YJA, but only one class from year 5 will be selected for participation in the evaluation. The YJA programme involves children leading their own newsrooms in schools and writing articles.
The control group will be business as usual.
The evaluation involves tests to assess the writing skills of the children.
What are the possible benefits and risks of participating?
The possible benefit to participants is that taking part in cultural learning programmes such as YJA can lead to higher levels of achievement in mathematics and literacy, which can lead to improvement of test scores. There are no known risks to participants in taking part in this study.
Where is the study run from?
Study is run by the Young Journalist Academy, London
Study is run by the UCL Institute of Education (London) and the Behavioural Insights Team (BIT) (London)
The schools participating in the study are based in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Rutland, London and Newcastle.
When is the study starting and how long is it expected to run for?
April 2017 to December 2019
Who is funding the study?
Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (London)
Royal Society for the Arts (RSA) (London)
Who is the main contact?
Dr Jake Anders
Senior Research Fellow
UCL Institute of Education
jake.anders@ucl.ac.uk
Contact information
Scientific
UCL Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way
London
WC1H 0AL
United Kingdom
 ORCID ID |
0000-0003-0930-2884 |
|---|
Scientific
UCL Institute of Education
20 Bedford Way
London
WC1H 0AL
United Kingdom
| ORCID ID |
0000-0002-1270-4131 |
|---|
Study information
| Study design | Interventional two-armed clustered randomised trial with randomisation occurring at the level of the school |
|---|---|
| Primary study design | Interventional |
| Secondary study design | Cluster randomised trial |
| Study setting(s) | School |
| Study type | Quality of life |
| Participant information sheet | Available from the trial website |
| Scientific title | Using the Young Journalist Academy to improve pupil attainment: A randomised trial in schools |
| Study acronym | YJA |
| Study hypothesis | Participation by schools in the Young Journalist Academy programme, which trains pupils to set up a newsroom and produce journalistic content, will improve pupils’ writing attainment and idea generation. |
| Ethics approval(s) | University College London Institute of Education’s Research Ethics Committee, 26/03/2018, Z6364106/2017/12/54 |
| Condition | Writing attainment at the end of year 5 |
| Intervention | Treatment: Participation in the Young Journalist Academy programme Control: Business as usual All classes will participate in YJA, but only one class from Year 5 will be selected for participation in the evaluation. Classes will be randomised into either the intervention or the control group. Classes in the intervention group will participate in the Young Journalist Academy (YJA) programme. Classes in the control group will continue with "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. The intervention group of the study will participate in the YJA programme. At the set-up meeting with the entire school staff, the school leadership team identifies a teacher who will take the lead on guiding the YJA over its five-phase implementation stage. In the first phase, the YJA staff come to the school for four days of training in order to ‘build the newsroom’, providing general training in print, audio and video journalism for all pupils. This occurs within the classroom of the lead teacher, with the entire class taking part. During this time, they select a core team of up to 15 pupils, based on an application process, who will serve as the editorial staff. This core team receives additional training during the second phase of the programme. During phases three to five, the pupils run the newsroom and produce journalistic content. YJA staff return at the halfway point of the school year and at the end of the school year during these phases to monitor progress and provide any additional support to the newsroom. These visits each last four days and include appraisal for the core team of pupils and discussions of how to carry the programme forward into the next school year. Content that is produced by the pupils during the course of the school year is sent to the YJA team and they publish it on their website, which receives 20,000 visitors per month. This is done through a rigorous process of remote moderation and editorial support. All work is sent via school (never by pupil directly) and feedback is provided if required before publication. Any amendments required from an editorial point of view, must be actioned before publication can happen. The delivery team engages with editorial responsibility and ensures that speedy ‘live’ responses happen to keep momentum. Establishing the school based newsroom - first phase of the programme - sets up an in school quality assurance process before work is submitted. This checking and editorial process prevents en-masse submissions and promotes the role of editing and professionalism within the production process. The control group receive no intervention and will continue as usual. The total duration of the intervention is one school year (year 5). Follow-up measures will be collected at the end of the school year. |
| Intervention type | Behavioural |
| Primary outcome measure | Writing attainment, assessed using the Writing Assessment Measure (WAM) at the end of the Year 5 school year in 2019. |
| Secondary outcome measures | 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. |
| Overall study start date | 01/04/2017 |
| Overall study end date | 31/12/2019 |
Eligibility
| Participant type(s) | Other |
|---|---|
| Age group | Child |
| Sex | Both |
| Target number of participants | 100 schools (clusters) with 30 pupils per school |
| Total final enrolment | 2137 |
| Participant inclusion criteria | 1. Located in Lincolnshire, Nottinghamshire, Derbyshire, Rutland, London or Newcastle 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 pupils in this teacher's class will participate) 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). |
| Participant exclusion criteria | Parents may choose for their child to not participate in the study; their data will not be collected or processed. |
| Recruitment start date | 01/01/2018 |
| Recruitment end date | 31/07/2018 |
Locations
Countries of recruitment
- England
- United Kingdom
Study participating centres
London
WC1H 0AL
United Kingdom
London
SW1H 9NP
United Kingdom
London
SW6 2SX
United Kingdom
Sponsor information
Charity
Millbank Tower
21-24 Millbank
Westminster
London
SW1P 4QP
United Kingdom
| Phone | 0207 802 1676 |
|---|---|
| info@eefoundation.org.uk | |
| Website | https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/ |
"ROR" |
https://ror.org/03bhd6288 |
Funders
Funder type
Not defined
Private sector organisation / Trusts, charities, foundations (both public and private)
- Alternative name(s)
- EducEndowFoundn, Education Endowment Foundation | London, EEF
- Location
- United Kingdom
No information available
Results and Publications
| Intention to publish date | 01/05/2021 |
|---|---|
| Individual participant data (IPD) Intention to share | Yes |
| IPD sharing plan summary | Stored in non-publicly available repository |
| Publication and dissemination plan | We will publish an Evaluation Report which will include the impact estimates for the primary and secondary outcomes. This will be published on the study page of the Education Endowment Foundation website. |
| IPD sharing plan | Current IPD sharing statement as of 15/08/2022: The datasets generated and analysed during the current study have been archived in the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)’s data archive, and will be available from this data archive in the future, on application to the EEF. Consent for this archiving and administrative data linkage was obtained from participants as part of the study. At the time of writing, access is not yet possible and the timing of access being made available is dependent upon the EEF, rather than the project team. The data archived includes all variables used as part of the analyses reported, named in line with a consistent data specification provided by the EEF (see appendix 3 of their policy on data archiving: https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/documents/evaluation/archiving-evaluation-data/Archiving-evaluation-data-analysed-in-the-SRS-Project-completion-and-archiving-form_v2.pdf). Application for access to the EEF data archive is contingent on providing detail of the public benefit of the research to be carried out, in line with the EEF data archive privacy notice: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/privacy-notices/privacy-notice-for-the-eef-data-archive; this will be assessed by the EEF as archive data owners, rather than the project team. Archive data are held and shared within a secure environment (UK Office for National Statistics Secure Research Service; ONS SRS), for which applicants must meet relevant requirements (including application for recognition as an accredited researcher from the ONS), as mitigation against potential identifiability risks. Previous IPD sharing statement: The datasets generated during and/or analysed during the current study will be stored in a non-publicly available repository: UK Office for National Statistics (ONS) Secure Research Service (SRS) (https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/requestingstatistics/secureresearchservice) Researchers need to follow ONS guidance and become accredited researchers (AR) before they can obtain access. Guidance is available here: https://www.ons.gov.uk/aboutus/whatwedo/statistics/requestingstatistics/secureresearchservice/becomeanaccreditedresearcher The data was archived following Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) guidance. Consent was obtained from participants and data was anonymized. The following privacy notice for the archive is available: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/privacy-notices/privacy-notice-for-the-eef-data-archive |
Study outputs
| Output type | Details | Date created | Date added | Peer reviewed? | Patient-facing? |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Funder report results | 07/09/2021 | 13/09/2021 | No | No | |
| Protocol (other) | 09/04/2019 | 10/08/2022 | No | No | |
| Statistical Analysis Plan | 05/02/2019 | 10/08/2022 | No | No |
Editorial Notes
15/08/2022: IPD sharing statement updated.
10/08/2022: Protocol, statistical analysis plan and IPD sharing statement added.
13/09/2021: The following changes have been made:
1. Funder report added.
2. The final enrolment number has been added from the report.
12/01/2021: The intention to publish date was changed from 31/01/2020 to 01/05/2021.
