Short Abstract

Our panel will examine what it takes to translate evaluation into real policy and practice change, sharing stories and practical lessons from our work on youth violence prevention, to illuminate how evaluators, funders and policymakers can collaborate effectively to address complex social issues.

Description

Our focus:

Evidence can illuminate what works, but unless it’s trusted, timely and actionable, it can be left on the shelf. This panel examines how evaluation evidence has been turned into concrete action to strengthen education policy and practice to prevent children’s involvement in violence. Bringing together evaluators (RAND Europe), the UK’s What Works Centre for preventing youth violence (the Youth Endowment Fund) and policymakers from the Department for Education, we’ll take an honest look at how robust evidence was generated, refined into actionable insights, and used to guide national reform and frontline improvement.

Why it matters:

In England, over 15,000 children were cautioned or convicted for violent offences in 2023/24 (YEF, 2025). Behind every number is a child navigating complex pressures and unequal systems. Structural inequalities (including poverty, racism and barriers experienced by children with special educational needs) shape exposure to risk, while access to protective factors (such as inclusive education, trusted relationships and social-emotional learning) remains uneven. Preventing children’s involvement in violence is, then, not only a question of safety, but an urgent demand of equity and justice. Meeting that demand requires us to connect evidence directly to decision-making, applying learning to create lasting, equitable change.

Our narrative:

Natalie Picken and Ana FitzSimons (RAND Europe) will open with insights from their YEF-funded evaluations of two major DfE violence prevention programmes: SAFE and APST. They will discuss what it takes to deliver rigorous mixed-methods evaluations that resonate with decision-makers, from measuring vulnerability and resilience, to capturing lived experiences of support. RAND will share powerful moments of discovery, how evaluations adapted to delivery realities to maximise usefulness, and how ongoing dialogue with policymakers and funders ensured formative learning informed plans and decisions.

Jo Goodman (YEF) will explore how RAND’s findings, alongside YEF’s broader evidence base, were distilled into Education Practice Guidance for Schools and Systems Guidance for Policymakers, which set out clear steps for driving change at classroom and policy levels. She will also reflect on YEF’s experience of bringing this guidance to life in schools through its EPIC and Catalyst programmes, sharing what this process reveals about turning evidence into effective action, rooted in the realities of schools and policymaking.

Pippa Bore (DfE) will close with the policymaker’s perspective: how evaluation evidence and YEF guidance have influenced wider reform, including through the SEND and AP Change Programme. She will explore the political and operational realities of acting on evaluation findings – what enables action, what constrains it, and how the Department is embedding iterative learning and evidence use into delivery.

Our objectives:

Participants will leave with a grounded understanding of how evaluators can engage and collaborate with funders and policymakers to co-design for influence; what helps (and hinders) the uptake of complex findings in fast-moving policy environments, and real examples of adaptive, cross-sector collaboration that bridge research, policy and practice.

Together, we’ll unpack the messy, essential work of connecting evaluation to real-world change, showing that ‘bridging the gap’ is a process of shared learning, adaptation and persistence.