The School of Education’s Education Policy and Research Service (EPRS) was best known for providing all subscribers with the latest education industry news and information since September 1989.
Since 2010, the service operated as a digital database, providing subscribers with access to ten summaries of the latest educational reports every month.
Despite being discontinued in August this year, the EPRS database is instead now free to access for the 2024-2025 academic year, containing reports published between the years 2010 and 2024; all of which can be referenced in academic papers.
Previously, the EPRS also included two toolkits: the EPRS toolkit, and the Core Content Framework (CCF) toolkit. While both were once accessible through an EPRS subscription – which is no longer available – they can now be purchased separately.
Newly named the EPRS Toolkit: Educator Research Resource, the kit consists of activities based on key reports for teacher trainers, mentors and education professionals. Essentially, it is a resource bank for those who intend to use the EPRS database as a teaching resource.
Overall, the EPRS toolkit contains suggestions for using the reports as teaching resources, fifty activities/lesson plans broken down by subject or theme and a series of discussion sheets based on key report summaries covering subject-specific and wider curriculum interests.
It also includes a list of curriculum-focused EPRS reports to use within the free-to-access database, pointing users in the right direction from the get-go.
Meanwhile, the CCF Toolkit contains an overview of 139 research articles, including a brief summary of the content and a quality grading. For each Teachers’ Standard, there are two summaries of research articles and two discussion/question sheets.
This allows for students and/or staff to read a research summary and prepare questions, which they can then discuss in groups in the classroom. Overall, the toolkit ensures that training for teachers is aligned with the Core Content Framework.
However, the toolkit is also available to purchase without activities too, so it can easily be adapted to the needs of the individual.
The EPRS administration team are pleased to continue offering access to both toolkits and the open EPRS database, both to educators within the University and to external educational institutions.