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This review set out to establish whether there were interventions that could be scaled up to address the attainment gap for socio-economically disadvantaged children and young people by changing a particular set of attitudes. These attitudes were the aspirations to do well at school and to aim for advanced education, the sense that one’s own actions can change one’s life, and the giving of value to schooling and school results, referred to as aspirations, locus of control and valuing school.

Attitude change, especially raising aspirations, has been a focus of policy in education for many years. However, what has been missing is any evidence that the recommended initiatives actually lead to the outcomes assumed by the policy. It was therefore important that this review should investigate intervention evaluations that looked at change in at least one of these attitudes and in some aspect of educational attainment. In this way, we could look at whether there were interventions that impacted on attainment via a change in attitudes. We sought to identify the best evidence to achieve this task. By searching academic journal databases and the websites of many organisations, and by asking the advice of academics, practitioners and young people, we selected for detailed analysis more than 60 research papers, of which just fewer than 30 were evaluations of particular interventions. These papers related to five intervention areas: parent involvement, mentoring, extra-curricular activities, volunteering and peer education, and interventions with a primary focus on attitude change. We also looked at the economic value of scaling up promising interventions, and …