Perhaps because school improvement research has traditionally been so weak (see Chapter 7), or because policy-makers have forgotten that a key component of the Education Act 1944 was for schools to minimise the impact of family background, there has been increased UK interest in education beyond formal institutions. In some respects, this could be a useful trend if followed to its logical conclusions (concerning informal learning, see below), but it can also be seen as a sign of defeat. According to some accounts, schools are not doing their job well enough. In response, the school day has been extended, more homework has been given, and there are breakfast clubs, after-school clubs and summer schools. The leaving age for schools was raised over decades from 14 to 15 and then 16. More recently the education and training leaving age has been raised to 17 and now 18 in England. There is more schooling than ever before. But this is, apparently, still not enough. So the problem is assumed to be lack of parental engagement in their child's education, and we have come full circle back to what the Education Act 1944 was trying to overcome by making schools compulsory, universal and free in the first place.

This chapter summarises my work in three strands with the common theme of learning or raising academic attainment outside of normal school (or other educational institution) hours. The strands concern out-of-school hours interventions (Gorard et al, 2015), trying to enhance parental involvement in their child's school work (Gorard and See, 2013), and learning or self-teaching entirely separate from institutions (Gorard et al, 1999c).

Evaluating out-of-hours interventions

As with the trials in Chapter 7, the out-of-hours evaluations summarised here are covered fully in Gorard et al (2017a). The first – Children's University (CU) – was an attempt to overcome a poverty gap in access to activities such as after-school clubs, arts and cultural events and volunteering and community-based projects (Southby and South, 2016). Whatever their other benefits, out-of-school activities (breakfast clubs, sports activities, music and art lessons, tuition, religious services) might also be able to improve attainment at school (Chanfreau et al, 2016).

The second – a summer school programme in three locations – was an attempt to reduce the summer learning loss for children moving to secondary school the following year, and so ease their transition from primary to secondary.