Time To Act: Evaluating the impact of Royal Shakespeare Company pedagogy on literacy and academic self-concept in primary schools

This study reports findings from an exploratory cluster randomised controlled trial evaluating the impact of the implementation of rehearsal room pedagogy on language, literacy and academic self-concept in Year 5 pupils. The intervention involved training teachers from 45 state-schools to deliver 20 hours of drama-based strategies, rooted in ensemble practice and active engagement with Shakespearean texts, within the English curriculum. The impact of the intervention was assessed using measures of reading, language, and writing skills. While no significant effects were observed on self-concept, reading or language, the intervention group demonstrated significantly greater lexical diversity, syntactic complexity, and emotional expressiveness in their writing. Pupils exposed to the rehearsal room approaches used more sophisticated vocabulary and sentence structures, and their narratives reflected deeper character understanding and emotional insight. These findings suggest that drama-based pedagogy can enhance written language skills, even when writing is not explicitly taught. The study provides proof of principle that rehearsal room strategies can be integrated into mainstream teaching and positively influence pupils’ writing. Future research should explore longer-term impacts, generalisation to other writing contexts, and potential gains in oracy and teacher confidence.