Research to Support Schools of Ambition

Principal Investigator’s Name: Prof Ian Menter
Funder: The Scottish Government
Amount Awarded: £330,000, with an additional funding of £150,000 announced in May 2009
Duration: September 2006-September 2010
Project Staff: Dr Moira Hulme, Kevin Lowden, Dr Alison Devlin, Dr Dely Elliot, Dr John Hall, Stuart Hall, Irene McQueen
University of Aberdeen: Fran Payne, Jenny Spratt, Dr Dean Robson, Norman Coutts University of Strathclyde: Prof Donald Christie, Alexis Merry.

During the period 2005-20010, a total of 52 secondary schools in Scotland have been awarded School of Ambition status.  Each school has had to put forward a proposed Transformational Plan outlining significant developments to be pursued over a three year period.  Each school that was awarded SoA status has been in receipt of an additional funding of £100k per year over three years.  The Scottish Executive/Government commissioned Research to support Schools of Ambition.  The successful tender for this work came from a consortium of three universities, Glasgow, Aberdeen and Strathclyde.  The initial plan for this work was based on a budget of £250k spread over three years and involved establishing a team of research mentors to provide direct support to each of the schools and the utilisation of a dedicated Virtual Research Environment (VRE) hosted by the University of Strathclyde as part of the VRE for the Applied Educational Research Network.

This work was commenced in August 2006 and the first annual report from the work is available on the Learning and Teaching Scotland website (http://www.ltscotland.org.uk/Images/SchoolsofAmbitionAnnualReport2007_tcm4-456717.pdf).  Two conferences for the teacher researchers in the schools have been held (May 2007, June 2008), at which participants made presentations reporting their research and evaluation activity.

Point of Contact (for queries): Dr Moira Hulme