Evaluation of the ‘Concept Cat’ teaching methodology

What is the issue?

There is evidence to suggest a link between conceptual language development and maths skills. Specifically, children who are exposed to more conceptual language in their early years tend to have stronger maths skills later in life. Evidence also suggests that children from disadvantaged backgrounds tend to have lower levels of conceptual vocabulary than their more advantaged peers, which in turn can have negative effects on their language, cognitive and academic development.

'Concept Cat' is a whole class teaching methodology conceived by the founders of Thinking Talking, Stephen Parsons and Anna Branagan in their book Word Aware 2. It is targeted at children aged between three and four and seeks to facilitate the acquisition of key early verbal concepts. The Concept Cat methodology offers an alternative to the generally unstructured and less explicit way these core concepts are taught in standard practice.

The approach teaches children concepts such as 'first', 'wide' and 'empty' in a structured and engaging manner with explicit teaching of vocabulary followed by implicit teaching in play-based learning. The teaching process includes staff acting out a scripted story with a toy cat. Families are also engaged with simple home activities, available in multiple languages.

How are we helping?

RAND Europe, along with partners at the University of York, has been commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to conduct an independent efficacy trial in order to test whether the Concept Cat programme can work under developer-led conditions.

The evaluation will involve 1,350 children from 90 early years settings participating in a randomised controlled trial. Participating settings will be randomly allocated to either receive Concept Cat or act as a business-as-usual comparison group. Data will be gathered in relation to the implementation of the Concept Cat programme including practitioner training, implementation of the programme in relation to business as usual, the development of practitioner knowledge and skills, and engagement with families.

The evaluation report will be published in Spring 2025.

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Additional team members

• Fin Oades
• Bhavya Singh
• Miguel Subosa