Research School Network: Triple P – Positive Parenting Project Wilbraham Primary look at one of the UN’s highest rated family skills training programme.

Wilbraham Primary School were really excited to be a part of the Triple P project, they attended early meetings about the project, jumped over all the organisational barriers to eventually find out they were going to be used as a control school. Being in the control group means that you carry on ​‘business as usual’ and you are then compared to the other schools in the trial who have implemented the project. Control schools are really important to research trials but it can be disappointing when you were looking forward to the intervention.


Here’s what Jacqui Morrison, Assistant Head, had to say about it all.

We were asked to be part of a trial being run by the EEF looking at evaluating the Triple P project with 3 and 4 year olds in the North West. The project was to look at delivering a parenting intervention that would support parents to help improve their children’s learning and development before they start Reception.

Triple P is already widely used internationally and has shown over numerous studies to lead to improvements in children’s behaviour. It is classed, as a whole, to be one of the UN’s highest rated family skills training programme.

We began the process by attending some training that looked at the overview of the project and how it would run in school. We then spoke with our Nursery parents and invited them to take part in the project with us. We were told at the beginning of the project that there was only a 50% chance of us being picked as half of the settings would be a ​‘control’ setting, allowing the researchers to look at the impact the training has on the parents and children involved with the trial.

We were informed that we are a ​‘control’ setting that means that we don’t run the Triple P programme but we do complete the end of year review with the children allowing the researchers to look at the results from all the settings and to measure the impact Triple P has on the families that access it. We were really disappointed to be in the control group but we are looking forward to seeing the outcomes of the trial.