Different student-centred compensatory interventions are in place in schools across Europe (e.g., peer tutoring; mentorships; summer programmes; etc.) to improve results, attendance, experience and overall wellbeing of low performing pupils in primary and secondary education. However further research is needed to understand the implementation process and when these interventions are truly effective, equitable and efficient.
LINEup will work on a complementary qualitative research focusing on students’ school engagement ,considered as one of the strongest predictors of academic performance and related trajectories.
The qualitative research – based on interviews and focus groups with more than 200 school leaders, teachers, students and parents from 54 schools in the 6 LINEup countries – will look at existing longitudinal data to identify areas that out- and under-perform at the national level in terms of students’ learning outcomes (e.g. consistent history of good or poor academic results) in each country of the project.
In these areas, the research team will zoom on high and low performing schools (case studies) to discuss with key stakeholders existing measures and other possible policies fostering students school engagement and better learning outcomes. This will allow investigating the interventions that compensate inequalities over time and complement the analysis of the longitudinal data.
The results of the qualitative research will be discussed in a validation workshop with the participation of 120 stakeholders (including the schools took part in the case studies).