Study supporters
- 2015
Challenge
Students retaking their GCSEs often lack ongoing encouragement from friends and family.
Insight
We harnessed the power of two behavioural insights to address this issue. The first was social networks and support. This refers to the concept that people’s friends and peers can be very influential in helping them to change their behaviour.
We also employed timely prompts. These focus on giving people reminders at opportune moments to help them take action.
Approach
We sent weekly text messages to students’ friends and family updating them about the student’s studies and prompting them to check in with the students.
Result & Impact
The intervention boosted exam pass rates by 27 per cent (though a recent trial by the Education Endowment Foundation did not replicate this finding).
