At WhatWorked Education, we're pioneering a new way to generate credible, actionable evidence directly from the classroom. Our latest partnership with Education Durham, funded by the North East Combined Authority, explores the feasibility of teacher-led micro-randomised controlled trials (micro-RCTs) as a practical, cost-effective way to generate classroom-based evidence and strengthen the region’s approach to school improvement.

Drawing on insights from schools outperforming expectations in challenging contexts, we identified seven promising teaching approaches and transformed them into 17 ready-to-run micro-trials using the WhatWorked Teachers platform. Teachers could implement these trials directly in their classrooms, upload results, and instantly receive personalised impact reports to understand whether the intervention was effective for their pupils. Download the research summary or full interim report below to find out what we learned and what this means for the future of teacher-led evaluation.