As part of Medway’s commitment to being a school whose pedagogy and culture is deeply rooted in academic research, our curriculum and many other areas, from attendance to behaviour, are based in academic research. In addition, we seek to add to the body of educational research by undertaking our own primary research in a number of different ways. This has the added advantage of producing research that is highly applicable to Medway’s individual context, as opposed to the wider body of academic literature which may be limited in its generalisability outside of a particular age group, demographic or any number of other factors.

All of our research meets stringent ethical guidelines which are set out in the school’s research policy. Nearly half of our teachers have, or are working towards, masters degrees and are well versed in the centrality of ethical considerations to research. The school also subscribes to the British Educational Research Association (BERA) journal and pays for staff to be members of the Chartered College of Teaching to stay up to date with developments in this regard. Our ethics are informed in particular by the guidelines in the BERA/SAGE Handbook of educational research (Farrimond, 2017).

Below are some example of the more recent research that has been undertaken at the school. It includes research by a member of the Senior Leadership Team into the importance of attachment awareness in our particular context. In addition, five members of the school were supported in undertaking a research project with Ash Field Academy, a research school in Leicester. This involved significant methodological training and resulted in research closely linked to the aims of the school improvement plan. Of particular note are the attachment awareness and oracy research which have been used to develop school policy in their respective areas. While our research is highly pertinent to our school context, it also aims to be outward looking. As such, all our research is presented below in simple poster formats. For additional information about the research, contact details are provided on the posters.