This document provides a summary of an evaluation of three inclusion projects run by Into Film in the 2013-14 academic year. The projects aimed to make film clubs more inclusive for pupils facing disadvantages. One project focused on newly arrived pupils and cultural awareness. A second worked with rural pupils to broaden horizons. The third supported pupils with special educational needs. The evaluation found that the projects helped with integration, cultural understanding, empathy, and literacy/social skills for participating pupils. Key films and activities like discussions and reviews were highlighted.

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Into Film Inclusion Projects
Summary of the Evaluation Findings
Centre for the Use of Research and Evidence in Education
(CUREE)

2. Introduction
During the 2013-­‐14 academic year Into Film, funded by the Paul Hamlyn Foundation, designed and
ran three projects to support Into Film club leaders working with pupils facing specific types of
disadvantage, with the aim of providing a more inclusive
learning environment for them. The three inclusion
projects were:
Identity and Belonging-­‐ working with pupils who
are newly arrived to the UK and their peers
Rural-­‐ working with pupils in rural areas who
rarely travel outside of their community
SEN-­‐ working with pupils with special educational
needs (SEN) and their peers, both in special and
mainstream schools
For each of these projects Into Film, working with expert advisors and Into Film club leaders, curated
a catalogue of films
significant. These included black and white films, animated films, and films in foreign languages with
subtitles. The films were specifically chosen by Into Film to evoke conversation in the target areas,
including cultural and global awareness, identity, and understanding and respecting others. There
were also films that children would not normally encounter in their daily life; they were selected for
beyond their own.
In addition, Into Film developed accompanying resources to go with each of the project films.
Resources were designed to be engaging and to fulfil the project aims, as well as being appropriate
for different cohorts of young people and different developmental levels, including SEN. Examples
of activities included:
Discussion starters
Questions probing understanding of both the film and the issues surrounding it:
Language development activities
Questions and activities linking films to personal experiences and similar:
you? How do you overcome y
Review writing and independent research tasks
Role play, drama and miming activities:
call with them: what advice will you give them for the future? In pairs act out this phone call
as a role play, then swap so each person has a chance to be one of the characters'
© tagxedo.com

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Drawing, painting and other craft and artwork:
Filmmaking:
seconds long) of something that is important to you or shows an element of your life that
Evidence base and methods
This summary is based on an evaluation of the Into Film Inclusion Projects carried out by CUREE, for
which a variety of evidence was collected and analysed, including:
leader and pupil surveys involving 273 members from 37 schools and 63 leaders;
a range of documentary evidence, including teachers' logs, feedback forms and pupils'
reviews.

4.
Zooming in: the Inclusion Projects in depth
Identity and Belonging
The Identity and Belonging project aimed to help Into Film club leaders:
Help newly arrived pupils integrate in the school
Increase cultural and world knowledge and understanding
Forty-­‐five schools from England, Wales and Northern Ireland took part in the project. Into Film club
leaders from the participating schools said that within the past five years their schools had
welcomed an increasing number of children who were new arrivals. Pupils came from an array of
different countries, including Romania, India and Afghanistan. A number of new arrivals were also
noted as being students from other areas of the UK.
The majority of Into Film club leaders involved in the project showed between six to nine project
films, specifically selected to help explore themes around community, identity and belonging.
According to Into Film club leaders and participating pupils, the most popular project films were:
Several Into Film club leaders also pinpointed Alamar as being a film that had worked particularly
well. Key here was the empathy the children had for the characters:
In most instances, Into Film club leaders held discussions about each of the films. Discussions were
used to unpick key themes in the film, think about other cultures and their ways of doing things, and
also as a way to make connections between the film and personal experiences:
; I would stop the films and the children
children in
An American
Tale
Mulan Arrietty
The Secret of
Kells
Kirikou and
the Sorceress

5.
confidence and developed an
understanding of different
Into Film club leader
Identity and Belonging project: Impact at a glance
Integration
72% of pupils described an increased feeling of being
part of the school
Cultural and global awareness
87% of pupils noted that they learnt about other
cultures and better understood how people in other
countries lived
93% of leaders also highlighted improvements in this area
Empathy
84% of pupils thought they got better at understanding how others feel
Participating pupils explained how the project films and activities helped them:
ms and learn more about

6.
Rural
The Rural project aimed to help Into Film club leaders:
Br
Overall, there were forty-­‐six schools who took part in the project, across all four nations. The main
reasons Into Film club leaders opted into the project was to improve cultural awareness, to identify a
Over half of Into Film club leaders surveyed stated that they had shown ten or more project films,
orizons and improve cultural awareness, whilst around
a third showed between six and nine project films. According to Into Film club leaders and pupils,
the most popular project films were:
The Secret of Kells worked particularly well, with pupils reporting that they enjoyed the different
style of animation:
The Secret of Kells was the most popular. I think it was a film that was totally unknown to
one of the boys that attended-­‐ he has many difficulties
at school and attending film club was a big achievement for him. I worried that the film
Around half of participating pupils reported writing reviews in the majority of their film club
sessions, which was mirrored in responses by Into Film club leaders. All of the clubs within the Rural
project were also given the opportunity to hold a Film on the Road visit. For these visits, Into Film
screen and bringing along beanbags, sound equipment and popcorn. Pupils were also encouraged to
write reviews in the Film on the Road visits; around 1600 reviews were written at or following these
competiti
The Water
Horse
The Secret
of Kells
Peter and
the Wolf
Mulan
Monsters
University

7.
literacy and social skills
immensely. We took a risk with
Into Film club leader
We have a Year 6 pupil with severe Asperger's Syndrome who attends film club regularly
but who has never written a film review. Following the [Film on the Road] visit, she wrote
her first review and is now reviewing...other films she has seen. When I first read these
reviews, I could not believe they were written by a 10-­‐year-­‐old
Rural project: impact at a glance
Cultural and global awareness
84% of pupils felt they had a better understanding of how people in other countries live
Empathy
84% of pupils thought they got better at understanding how others feel
Confidence
78% of Into Film club leaders noted increases in
their pupils' confidence in joining discussions
Literacy skills
Film on the Road was seen to be effective at
encouraging pupils to write reviews, with over
1600 reviews written at or after an event
Into Film club leaders explained how the project films and activities had helped their pupils:
ally good and hit my own ideas of rural inclusion, allowing the children
through the doors. The film choice also challenged them in terms of the films that they

8.
SEN
The SEN project aimed to help Into Film club leaders:
Improve learning and engagement across the curriculum
Forty-­‐eight schools took part in the SEN project, across all four nations. Around three quarters of
Into Film club leaders surveyed reported that the majority of the pupils attending film club had a
form of SEN. The most common forms of SEN noted were autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) and
attention deficit hyperactivity disorder/attention deficit disorder (ADHD/ADD).
Over half of the Into Film club leaders showed more than ten project films. According to Into Film
club leaders and pupils, the most popular project films were:
Films with limited dialogue, such as Wall-­‐E, Peter and the Wolf and Mr Bean: The Ultimate Disaster
Movie were also seen as good choices for the project. Into Film club leaders noted that these films
had been accessible for students to watch and that pupils were able to understand the films. These
were reported as being particularly good films for those with ASD:
Peter and the Wolf] had no dialogue helped the students to ask
questions
Wall-­‐E and Mr Bean are big favourites; there is a limited number of characters and plot
lines, lots of simplified non verbal communication and lots of fun. This made it very
understandable for the kids and non-­‐
In most instances, the participating Into Film club leaders held discussions about each of the films.
was found to be a valuable activity:
number of discussions such as friendship, loneliness and bullying, which all related to our life
Duck
Soup
Wall-­‐E
A Cat in
Paris
Lost and
Found
Life of Pi

9.
Ofsted... [they]
commented upon excellent pupil
engagement and behaviour. We
Into Film club leader
SEN project: Impact at a glance
Learning and engagement across the curriculum
71% of pupils felt that film club had helped them to do better at school, with several Into
Film club leaders seeing film club as a way of getting pupils to learn without them realising it
Empathy
82% of pupils thought they better understood how
other people live
Social skills
69% of Into Film club leaders saw improvements in
Understanding of film
89% of pupils thought they now understood more about film
Participating Into Film club leaders explained how the project films and activities helped their pupils:
iting difficult. You can really see the progress [in their written
film reviews] over the year in terms of neater handwriting (from using large print which falls
usion project has made staff look more closely at the films we are screening and

10.
finding that a love of fil
Into Film club leader, Rural project
Common areas of impact across the three projects
As well as project-­‐specific benefits, outlined above, there were also changes in pupil knowledge,
skills and behaviours that were present and visible across all three projects. These are illustrated
below.
Literacy skills
One very positive outcome of all three projects was a recognisable improvement in pupils' literacy
punctuation and sentence construction, and encouraged them to use more complex vocabulary in
Engaging with review writing was found to improve pupils' literacy skills:
ted creativity skills of children leading to
developed
Social skills and relationships
Across all three projects, leaders noted that pupils increased their social skills and improved
relationships with peers and staff. This was particularly the case for the Identity and Belonging and
SEN projects, as the majority of Into Film club leaders (68% of SEN; 69% of Identity and Belonging)
which to communicate and interact with other pupils. This was especially valuable in the SEN
project, as many SEN pupils can find socialising with others a challenge. 70% of pupils in the SEN
project felt that film club had helped them to make new friends.
For children and young people attending film clubs in the Identity and Belonging project, socialising
and making friends was equally important; 63% of pupils agreed that they had made new friends
from attending film club. Staff from sc
their pupils had developed their social skills, as film based activities provided an opportunity for
pupils from different year groups within the school to mix together.
Confidence
eased confidence was noticed by the participating pupils and staff alike. For example,
90% of pupils of the Identity and Belonging project highlighted feeling confident about expressing
their opinions after attending film club. Similarly, the majority of Into Film club leaders within the
SEN (68%) and Rural (79%) projects were delighted with their pupils' increased confidence and
participation in sessions.
Empathy
Participants in all three projects highlighted that film club had helped them to better understand
how others feel. As one pupil put it:

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find it difficult to understand and show empathy... one of the main
Into Film club leader, SEN project
The majority of the Into Film club leaders agreed with these observations, acknowledging that the
project films had acted as springboards for discussing emotions and how others might feel.

12.
Into Film club leader, Rural project
Alamar and read the three reviews posted by
our members. Those reviews were done with no support from parents, it was just the
children and me in the ICT suite. I followed your guidelines (thanks a lot for that,
ers to do some drawing and had a
very lively debate about the difficulties new pupils encounter when settling in a new
school. Then, after twenty minutes, I got them to write about the movie for about half
Into Film club leader, Identity and Belonging project
produced specially for an SEN
project has been invaluable and have acted as a step-­‐by-­‐step guide for each film
Into Film club leader, SEN project
Conclusions
Participation in the Inclusion Projects brought about a number of positive impacts. Across all three
projects, pupils developed their social skills and confidence, improved their language and literacy
skills through discussing films and writing film reviews, and developed empathy and respect for
others. Overall, the project films and activities were successful in achieving their aims for the specific
groups of pupils who took part. For example, most children and young people involved in the
Identity and Belonging project referred to feeling being part of the school more. Similarly, 84% pupils
involved in the Rural project felt they had a better understanding of how people in other countries
live. Most special needs pupils (71%) involved in the project felt that it had helped them to do better
at school. In addition, Into Film club leaders successfully used the project films and resources to
enhance and enrich their film clubs. As young people themselves noticed, the project films:
were interesting
made them think, and
Although not all Into Film club leaders were able to use the resources provided because of time
constraints, those who did reported how useful they found them:
The Inclusion Projects were successful at helping film clubs to engage and secure the benefits
described in this report for some of their most disadvantaged pupils in challenging circumstances.
They also highlighted the potential of film clubs as a powerful and enjoyable model for extra-­‐
curricular learning and development.
To find out more about starting up a film club go to: http://www.intofilm.org/schools-­‐film-­‐clubs