Paul Connolly is Professor of Education and Head of the School of Education at Queen’s University Belfast. His main areas of expertise include: diversity and inclusion in early childhood; evaluating the effectiveness of educational programmes and interventions; and quantitative methods and statistical analysis in education. He is founding Director of Una: The Global Learning Initiative on Children and Ethnic Diversity (www.unaglobal.org) and author of a number of books including: Racism, Gender Identities and Young Children (Routledge, 1998); Researching Racism in Education (Open University Press, 1998); and Boys and Schooling in the Early Years (Routledge, 2004). Over the past 10 years Paul has developed considerable expertise in randomized controlled trials in education. He is former Director of the Centre for Effective Education (www.qub.ac.uk/cee), that has conducted over 30 RCTs in recent years, and currently leads the cross-university Improving Children’s Lives initiative (www.improvingchildrenslives.org) at Queen’s. He is Co-Chair of the Campbell Collaboration Education Review Group (www.campbellcollaboration.org/ECG/Education/index.php) and author of the textbook Quantitative Data Analysis in Education (Routledge, 2007). He is currently working with colleagues at Queen’s on a methodology textbook for the BERA/Sage Research Methods Series on Randomised Controlled Trials in Education. He was a member of the recent UK REF 2014 Sub-Panel (25) for Education and is a member of the ESRC Grants Assessment Panel. For further information see: www.paulconnolly.net.