Making the Gift Horse Jump the Hurdles: The Impact of the TVEI Pilot on the first Scottish Cohort

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Abstract
TVEI in its pilot phase seeks to ‘test and explore’ new approaches to the education and training of 14‐18 year‐olds. Quantitative performance indicators can be used to assess its impact in two ways. ‘Whole‐school’ comparisons contrast the performance of TVEI schools with other schools nationally, and with their own performance in earlier years. ‘Within‐school’ comparisons contrast TVEI with non‐TVEI students from the same schools. Whole‐school comparisons, based on the year group which included the first Scottish pilot TVEI cohort, found no impact of TVEI on examination attainment, truancy, staying‐on at 16 or the employment of early leavers. Within‐school comparisons found a favourable (if problematic) effect on truancy, but found no significant average effect across the Scottish projects on the other outcomes. However the effects of TVEI on all outcomes varied across schools or projects. The true test of the success of the TVEI pilot is its ability to learn from this variation, and will be measured in respect of later cohorts.