CREST Silver Award Scheme

• Register: ISRCTN
• Last refreshed on: 7 October 2019
• Main ID: ISRCTN36563952
• Date of registration: 02/11/2017
• Prospective Registration: No
• Primary sponsor: Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)
• Public title: CREST Silver Award Scheme
• Scientific title: CREST Silver Award Scheme: a randomised controlled trial
• Date of first enrolment: 06/03/2017
• Target sample size: 1720
• Recruitment status: Ongoing
• URL: http://isrctn.com/ISRCTN36563952
• Study type: Interventional
• Study design: Randomised controlled trial (Other)
• Phase: Not Applicable

Countries of recruitment

Albania

Contacts

• Name: Margaret Anderson

Key inclusion & exclusion criteria

Inclusion criteria:
A school is eligible to take part in the trial if:
1. Its proportion of pupils eligible for everFSM is at least as high as the England average
2. It has not participated in CREST Bronze, Silver or Gold in the academic year prior to the intervention (i.e. in 2016/17)
3. It is not in special measures
4. It agrees not to take part in CREST or Go4Set (a 10 week STEM project that incorporates CREST) with the same pupils if they are assigned to the control condition, if possible until the end of the GCSEs
5. It can recruit between six and 35 pupils, of whom 25% should be eligible for free school meals (under the everFSM category)

Exclusion criteria: All schools signed up to the trial will formalise their participation by signing a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU). As part of this they are agreeing that they can meet the eligibility criteria set out above. Before schools invite eligible pupils to express an interest in taking part (via the online pupil survey) they must conduct a parental/carer opt out exercise. Any opted out pupils will be excluded, but there are no characteristics as such that would otherwise exclude eligible pupils from taking part.

Age minimum:
Age maximum:
Gender: Both

Health Condition(s) or Problem(s) studied

STEM knowledge
Not Applicable

Intervention(s)

Schools agreeing to take part in the trial will invite eligible students, whose parents have not opted them out, to express an interest in taking part. It is a two-arm cluster (school-level) randomised controlled effectiveness trial, so as soon as all baseline data has been collected, schools will be assigned to one of two groups. Randomisation will be stratified by the proportion of pupils who have everFSM status and prior attainment. On each dimension, recruited schools will be split into two equally-sized groups of high and low measures of the dimension’s scale. Assignment will take place within the combined groups.

The project involves schools being randomly allocated (50:50 chance) to one of two groups:
1. Group 1: Schools that deliver the CREST Silver Award to eligible Year 9 students who have expressed an interest in taking part
2. Group 2: Schools that teach STEM subjects as they would normally in Year 9

Those delivering the CREST Silver Award (Group 1) will support the Year 9 students taking part to carry out a student-led STEM project over the course of two academic terms. This involves at least 30 hours of student-led project work. Completed projects are submitted to the British Science Association for independent assessment against a set of 15 criteria. If few of these criteria are met, this is taken as an indication that insufficient time has been spent on the project. Pupils are supported in undertaking the CREST Award by an educator (e.g. a teacher, technician, club leader) and can undertake their project work in different settings (during class, during a lunchtime/after school club, or a placement outside of school). Implementation varies widely due to the flexibility of the CREST Award. This flexibility is necessary to facilitating inquiry-led learning, whereby students learn by solving a problem or answering a question. The aim is that inquiry-led learning will have

Primary Outcome(s)

Science knowledge, measured using GL’s Progress Test in Science. It is an adaptive assessment covering physics, chemistry, biology and curriculum knowledge as well as knowledge of concepts that relate to working scientifically. This will be administered in May – June 2018 to all pupils that signed up.

Secondary Outcome(s)

1. GCSE science results, obtained from NPD after the end of Year 11 (January - March 2021)
2. Other secondary outcome measures will assess soft outcomes; this data will be collected through standardised measures in a pupil survey administered before and after the intervention. The soft outcomes of interest include:
2.1. Confidence
2.2. Attitudes to school
2.3. Young people’s self-efficacy in science
2.4. Young people’s future aspirations in science

Secondary ID(s)

NatCen REF P12153

Source(s) of Monetary Support

Education Endowment Foundation (EEF)

Ethics review

Status:
Approval date:
Contact:

NatCen Social Research Ethics Committee, 21/04/2017

Results

• Results available: Yes
• Date Completed: 31/03/2021