Increasing Pupil Motivation: Evaluation Report and Executive Summary
Author: Sibieta, Luke
Date: 2014-10-00
Type: Reports - Research
Subjects: Student Motivation,Educational Attainment,Exit Examinations,Secondary Education,Secondary School Students,Student Certification,Incentives,Foreign Countries,Program Evaluation,Rewards,Mathematics Achievement,Science Achievement,English,Statistical Significance,Student Improvement,Randomized Controlled Trials,Outcomes of Education,Intervention,Pretests Posttests,Statistical Analysis,Least Squares Statistics,Regression (Statistics),Semi Structured Interviews

'Increasing Pupil Motivation' was designed to improve attainment of the General Certificate of Secondary Education (GCSE) by providing incentives to increase pupil effort in Year 11. Two schemes for incentivising pupil effort were implemented. The first provided a financial incentive, where pupils were told they had £80 ($110.66) at the beginning of each half-term. Money was deducted if they did not reach the threshold in four measures of effort: attendance, behaviour, classwork and homework. The second provided an incentive of a trip or event. Pupils were allocated a certain number of tickets at the start of term and lost them if they failed to meet targets on the same set of four effort thresholds. Pupils that retained enough 'tickets' were rewarded with an event, chosen by pupils in the year group at the start of the school term. Pupil effort was monitored by the schools involved in the intervention, but the design and development of the incentive schemes was undertaken by the project team at the University of Bristol in the first four half-terms of the 2012/13 academic year. The target population was relatively deprived schools, classified by schools with an average pupil IDACI (Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index) score in the highest 10% in England. 279 eligible schools were invited to participate by the project team, with 84 schools indicating an initial willingness to participate. 63 schools agreed to participate in the intervention after an initial training event in July 2012; they then formed the final set of experimental schools. Key conclusions of the evaluation were: (1) Event Incentives--There is no evidence of a significant positive impact of event incentives on GCSE attainment in Maths, English or Science; (2) Financial Incentives--There is no evidence of a significant positive impact of financial incentives on GCSE attainment in Maths, English or Science; (3) There is a statistically significant improvement in classwork effort across English, Maths and Science for the financial incentive treatment. There is no evidence of impact on behaviour, attendance or homework effort. This may suggest that even when there is a marked improvement in effort in classwork, this does not translate into higher GCSE attainment; (4) There was a positive impact of both the event and financial incentives on GCSE Maths for pupils with low levels of prior attainment--equivalent to about one quarter of a GCSE grade in Maths, although this is not statistically significant for the financial incentive treatment; (5) Schools found it difficult to organise and pay for events before they knew how many pupils were likely to meet their targets. Schools should also consider the cost of monitoring and providing feedback about pupil effort; and (6) Further research should explore the level of incentive required to induce pupil effort, and the long-term impact of such schemes. Further research might also be needed to see if there are any adverse effects if schools just decided to incentivise one subject (e.g. Maths) or just one group of pupils (e.g. those with low levels of prior attainment). Additionally, future studies should explore why incentives appear to change classwork effort but do not necessarily translate into higher attainment. The relationship between improved pupil effort and its impact on attainment should be examined in greater detail.