Our Offerings: System Improvement
Pearson’s System Improvement Services help both teachers and leaders gain valuable insights, strategies, and practices to ensure that you are maximizing your potential. Whether it is a Board-wide Strategic Plan or a specific new intervention or initiative in your school, our services will put you on the right track to achieve your goals.
Efficacy Review: A Systematic Approach
Chief Education Officer, Sir Michael Barber, and his team developed a collaborative form of engagement that allows individuals, teams, and systems to deeply investigate the impact of any given intervention or initiative on learning outcomes. This work relies on an Efficacy Framework and employs an Efficacy Review.
We will work with you to systematically examine the impact of your work on educational outcomes for learners, and to take action that will maximize the impact on outcomes. Efficacy Reviews are meant to be collaborative, fast-paced, and draw extensively on the experience of key stakeholders.
What is this Efficacy Framework?
The Efficacy Framework is constructed to cover four dimensions that are critical to any successful implementation of an educational intervention or service:
- Outcomes: In order to have a measurable impact on learner outcomes, you need to be clear about what you are aiming to achieve.
- Evidence: A well-designed solution requires evidence or proof that you can achieve the intended outcome.
- Planning and implementation: Achieving your intended outcomes takes dedicated work and careful planning. This section prompts you to think about the plans, governance and systems you have in place to deliver them
- Capacity to deliver: This section prompts you to think about whether you have the resources (time/people/budget etc.) and abilities you need to deliver these outcomes.
The Efficacy Review milestones
- Review of evidence beforehand by the Pearson Efficacy Review Team. Headed by Dr. Tania Sterling, our Efficacy Review Team has extensive experience in research and change management within the education context.
- Project team self-assessment (5-7 hour hands-on workshop)
- Interviews and observations with additional key stakeholders (one-on-one interviews or focus groups
- Detailed summary report and action plan (shared face-to-face or via WebEx in PPT format)
- On-going implementation, monitoring and reporting (done by the project team)
- Facilitated check-ins at 3 month, 6 month and 12 month intervals to gauge and document progress
Results
Change takes time. Pearson consultants work alongside you until we see results. Feedback from school districts, ministries of education and higher education institutions highlight these key benefits:
- Clarifies the desired outcome for an initiative
- Predicts the likelihood of achieving that outcome
- Describes the evidence of efficacy
- A report outlining recommended actions and rationale for strengthening likelihood of efficacy
- A strongly collaborative process between an internal and an external review team
- Involving a third party provides objective facilitation necessary to advance system work
Case Study
View our case study to see how Pearson worked with Keewatin Patricia District School Board to put students' needs first.
For more information regarding the Efficacy Review process, please contact:
For additional information please send an email to: