Evaluation (in-house) of Y7 Theatre in Education in West Yorkshire

The West Yorkshire Safer Roads Delivery Group (WYSRDG) funds a Theatre in Education (TIE) performance that is shown to Y7 students in schools across the county each year. Students and teachers very much enjoy the performance. The WYSRDG wanted to conduct internal research, led by Leeds City Council, to evaluate the educational impact. Students were asked 14 questions about their behavioural intentions and attitudes in relation to pedestrian road safety before watching a TIE performance, and then again soon after.

Results show a very high starting point: students express mostly positive road safety attitudes and claim to behave mostly safely before seeing the show. This suggests that there may be little room for improvement as things stand.

At the individual level, there were no significant changes in attitude or behaviour following the show for the small sample available.

At the population level, some questions relating to attitudes showed small but statistically significant changes. There was a shift in student responses from hardly ever to never in these areas, perhaps consolidating high starting points.

There may be value in looking more closely at the use of phones while walking on the pavement. Listening to music (either walking or crossing) is also another area to consider.

This evaluation shows small changes in only a limited number of areas. Given the popularity of the show, though, it is worth thinking about how WYSRDG might work with TIE in the future, either to refine the content so that it does offer greater educational value, or to recognise its worth instead as a foot-in-the-door device to help local authorities reach schools, particularly those that may otherwise have no road safety provision. The greater challenge is perhaps less about expecting a single TIE show to achieve direct educational outcomes and more about how to consolidate learning after the actors have been and gone.

These in-house findings and conclusions broadly echo those of the more extensive, externally commissioned research about TIE published in August 2019 by Transport Scotland.

The project team also published a things we learnt series of notes having carried out the evaluation in-house, which are available for download below, along with the full report.