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This blog post draws on our experience recruiting schools for the project, a large-scale, independent evaluation of the Department for Education’s programme (2017–2022). Having recruited 60 schools from 12 designated Opportunity Areas across England, spanning urban, rural and coastal locations, we have seen first-hand how much research depends on schools’ willingness to participate despite significant institutional pressures. That dependency, and the work it takes to sustain it, is the focus of this blog post.

As researchers, our first task in many projects is not analysis or theory-building but recruiting schools and engaging them in the research process. Despite careful preparation, ethical approval and robust study designs, this stage can feel uncertain and slow, with responses often absent or delayed. Recruitment is not a procedural formality but an emotionally demanding phase requiring persistence, adaptability and patience (Wanat, 2008). Yet this labour remains largely invisible in academic outputs, despite its central role in determining whether research can proceed and shaping what evidence gets produced.

Academic research involving schools depends on the goodwill, time and commitment of schools, teachers, pupils and parents. This contribution is recognised through acknowledgements in academic outputs. While necessarily brief, these acknowledgements represent a substantial body of work underpinning the generation of research evidence, yet the processes that justify them are rarely articulated.

School recruitment and engagement involve interconnected stages: gaining institutional access, recruiting participants through multi-level communication, conducting ethical data collection, and providing appropriate feedback and closure (Vukotich & Stebbins, 2014). In practice, this meant investing time in building relationships through existing local networks rather than approaching schools cold. Across the 12 sites, we worked closely with Opportunity Area partnership board members (the local governance groups overseeing each area), local authority contacts, multi-academy trust (MAT) chief executive officers and other trusted intermediaries who could introduce the study, endorse its value and help establish credibility with school leaders.

Schools are busy organisations whose central responsibility is the delivery of education, and there are no clearly defined pathways for recruiting them or sustaining their engagement in research. This absence of formalised structures meant that, in several sites, schools were initially unaware of the opportunities that participation could offer, including professional development, collaboration with other schools and a stake in shaping local findings, until we made that case directly.

From our experience, school participation is rarely driven by financial incentives; instead, it reflects professional goodwill and a commitment to contributing evidence that may inform practice and policy (Leat et al., 2015). However, participation places real demands on schools. In one site, an interview with a headteacher was rescheduled because the school was preparing for an inspection by England’s schools regulator Ofsted; in another, a focus group was rearranged after a safeguarding issue required staff to prioritise pupil welfare. Timetable adjustments and staff time are vulnerable to disruption from everyday pressures, requiring researchers to remain flexible and responsive.

‘Schools engaged with the project as a chance to showcase their work, reflect on practice and engage with evidence in ways that are not always possible within routine accountability frameworks.’

Despite these challenges, participation was consistently viewed positively, as school staff welcomed the opportunity to share their perspectives on social mobility challenges in their localities. Schools engaged with the project as a chance to showcase their work, reflect on practice and engage with evidence in ways that are not always possible within routine accountability frameworks (Siddiqui et al., 2018). Far from approaching research defensively, schools treated it as a reflective process enabling professional learning and exchange between researchers and practitioners (Cain, 2016).

Recruitment usually falls to postdoctoral researchers and research assistants, for whom impersonal approaches, such as cold calls or mass emails, rarely succeed. Personalised emails referencing familiar Opportunity Areas-funded initiatives were more likely to elicit responses, particularly when introductions came through trusted senior leaders.

Recognising recruitment and engagement as integral to academic inquiry reframes how acknowledgements are understood: they capture not just cooperation but the labour, trust and professional generosity of education stakeholders. In this spirit, we thank and encourage school leaders to engage with researchers, and remind researchers that meaningful engagement requires strategic, personalised approaches that respect school contexts and minimise burden.

References

Cain, T. (2016). Research utilisation and the struggle for the teacher’s soul: A narrative review. European Journal of Teacher Education, 39(5), 616–629.

Leat, D., Reid, A., & Lofthouse, R. (2015). Teachers’ experiences of engagement with and in educational research: What can be learned from teachers’ views?. Oxford Review of Education, 41(2), 270–286.

Siddiqui, N., Gorard, S., & See, B. (2018). The importance of process evaluation for randomised control trials in education. Educational Research, 60(3), 357–370.

Vukotich Jr, C. J., Cousins, J., & Stebbins, S. (2014). Building sustainable research engagements: Lessons learned from research with schools. Journal of Research Practice, 10(1), M1.

Wanat, C. L. (2008). Getting past the gatekeepers: Differences between access and cooperation in public school research. Field Methods, 20(2), 191–208.