Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the pedagogical rationale and practices of the Ralston-Semler Foundation Lumiar schools, with specific reference to their mosaic curricula.

The Department has not made any direct assessment of the Ralston-Semler Foundation Lumiar schools.

The mosaic curricula the Lumiar schools have developed is a personalised project based curriculum that focuses on developing skills and competencies.

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has undertaken research on individualised instruction but has not evaluated the mosaic curricula or these schools. The EEF rate individualised instruction as low impact based on a moderate strength of evidence: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/resources/teaching-learning-toolkit/individualised-instruction/

The Sutton Trust and Durham University have also published an overview of effective pedagogy which notes that discovery learning is not supported by research evidence. This can be found in the attached document.