The Pupil Premium: Raising attainment and accelerating progress

Alice Chicken

Department for Education

Redcar and Cleveland

4 July 2014

Areas I plan to cover today

1. The context – The Government’s reform agenda– Why is the Pupil Premium needed?

2. What is the Pupil Premium?

3. The key components of the Pupil Premium– Pupil Premium funding– Evidence of what works– Accountability for results

4. What does this mean for schools?

Improving disadvantaged pupils’ life chances is at the heart of the Government’s education reform agenda

‘…no country that wishes to be considered world class can afford to allow children from poorer families to fail as a matter of course.’

Prime Minister and Deputy Prime Minister

-2.5 -2.0 -1.5 -1.0 -0.5 0.0 0.5 1.0 1.5 2.0400

440

480

520

560

600

640

Average pupil performance on the 2012 PISA mathematics assessment, by quarters of socio-economic status

Hong Kong-China

Macao-China

Estonia

Finland

Canada

OECD average

England

Index of pupil socio-economic status

more advant-aged

more disadvant-aged

Key●----------------------x----------------------x----------------------●First quarter, second quarter, third quarter, fourth quarter

PISA 2012 m

athem-

atics performance

"Our data shows it doesn't matter if you go to a school in Britain, Finland or Japan, students from a privileged background tend to do well everywhere. What really distinguishes education systems is their capacity to deploy resources where they can make the most difference. Your effect as a teacher is a lot bigger for a student who doesn't have a privileged background than for a student who has lots of educational resources.“

Andreas Schleicher – OECD

5

Pupil Premium: the gap• The gap gets wider as pupils get older:

• 17.3ppt gap (63.4% achievement by PP pupils, 80.7% non-PP) achieving level 4+ in reading, writing and maths at age 11 (2013)

• 26.9ppt gap (40.9% achievement by PP pupils, 67.8% non-PP) achieving 5+ A*-C grades including English and maths GCSEs at age 16

• Big variations between schools and between LAs• KS2 reading, writing, maths gap: Newham 4ppts, Rutland 35ppts• GCSE 5+ A*-C inc. English and maths gap: Tower Hamlets 7ppts,

Southend-on-Sea 43ppts

• Between 2011 and 2013, the percentage of disadvantaged pupils achieving 5 or more good GCSEs including English and maths has risen by 4.8 percentage points and the gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has reduced by 2.1 percentage points.

• The highest attainment for FSM eligible pupils and smallest gaps on average occur in schools with high rates of FSM in secondary schools

• Gaps can vary widely from year to year in schools

Weakest and strongest performing local authorities by attainment of disadvantaged pupils and the attainment gap by percentage of pupil premium eligibility, 2013

Incentives

Funding

SchoolInterventions

Inspection

Pupil Premium reviews

Better information

Evidence on effectiveness

8Our policy incentives

Funding

9

Since April 2011, additional and rising targeted school funding for disadvantaged pupils: £625million in 2011-12 – £488 per pupil £1.25billion in 2012-13 – £623 per pupil £1.875billion in 2013-14 – £900 per pupil £2.5billion in 2014-15:

– £1300 primary-aged pupils– £935 secondary-aged pupils– £1900 for all looked-after children,

adopted children and care leavers

School interventions

10

Schools have the freedom to choose the interventions they consider to be most effective and cost-effective, but need to publish online:

the school’s pupil premium allocation for the current academic year

details of how you intend to spend the allocation

details of how you spent the previous academic year’s allocation

how it made a difference to the attainment of disadvantaged pupils

Identify pupils with Key to Success tool

Inspection

12

From Sept 2013, sharper “Section 5” inspections, more focussed on attainment of disadvantaged pupils: schools will now not normally be judged

“outstanding” if – among other things – disadvantaged pupils are not making good progress

schools judged “requiring improvement” overall and on leadership where disadvantaged pupils are not making good progress are likely to have a Pupil Premium review recommended

Read the new framework document

Pupil premium reviews

13

From Sept 2013, any school can commission a Pupil Premium review. The review:

to identify effective action for raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils

should be led by a system leader, usually from the National College for Teaching and Leadership (NCTL), with a track record in this area

can be paid for using pupil premium funding does not require an Ofsted recommendation

– any school can commission a review

NCTL have a directory of system leaders

Better information

14

From October 2013, better information on the achievement of disadvantaged pupils, with:

attainment data on disadvantaged pupils for schools in RAISEonline (Oct 2013, primary, Dec 2013, secondary)

new three-year rolling average measures in performance tables (Dec 2013, primary, Jan 2014, secondary)

enhanced similar schools tool with FSM banding information

See RaiseONLINE and performance tables

Evidence of effectiveness

15

Since February 2012, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has awarded £28.7m to 56 projects, including 23 on literacy catch-up.

Most are rigorously evaluated using randomised controlled trials (RCTs)

Knowledge gained will be published on a termly basis from January 2014

EEF teaching and learning toolkit to provide accessible evidence and advice on the effectiveness of a range of approaches.

16EEF teaching and learning toolkit

FeedbackApproach

Average impact

CostEvidence estimate

Summary

Feedback 8 months ££Very high impact for

low cost

Research suggests that providing effective feedback is challenging. To be effective, it should be:• About challenging tasks or goals rather than easy ones.• Given sparingly so that it is meaningful.• About what is right more often than about what is wrong.• Specific, accurate and clear, e.g. not just “correct” or “incorrect”.• Provide examples of what is correct and not just tell students when they

are wrong.• Encouraging and supportive of further effort without threatening a

learner’s self-esteem.

Toolkit: Notes on the February 2014 Update

The Toolkit is a live resource which will be updated on a regular basis as findings from EEF-funded projects and other high-quality research become available.

Major updates made to the Toolkit in February 2014 include:• The addition of one new topic: Oral language interventions.• The inclusion of findings from EEF projects into five strands:

Feedback, One to one tuition, Small Group tuition, Summer schools and Teaching assistants.

• Updated entries for Reducing Class Size and Teaching assistants.• A new Programmes layer, highlighting programmes related to the

Toolkit which have been evaluated by the EEF or others.

Other activitiesJohn Dunford – our Pupil Premium champion• Chair of Whole Education and the Chartered Institute of Educational

Assessors and former ASCL general secretary• Speaking up and down the country to school leaders• Feed back directly to the Department on issues raised

Summer schools• Aims to support transition from primary to secondary in 2012 and 2013• Around 2000 school supported ~58,000 Year 7s this summer, compared

with around 1700 school supporting ~39,000 pupils in 2012• Evaluation identified benefits inc. quicker settling in and readiness to learn

Pupil Premium awards• Up to £10,000 for schools that are doing the most to boost the achievement

of disadvantaged pupils.• Winners and runners up announced at an awards ceremony on 25 June

2014 (and previous year on 8 July 2013)

19

What does Ofsted say?

Ofsted’s 2013 report said:

“While there are some pockets of very good practice, we find that too many schools are still not spending the Pupil Premium on interventions that are making any meaningful impact.”

“Many schools still lack good enough systems for tracking the spending of the additional funding or for evaluating the effectiveness of measures they have put in place in terms of improving outcomes. In short, they struggle to show that the funding is making any real difference.”

“The best school leaders know what they want to achieve from each of their interventions and they evaluate progress thoroughly to make sure these are working. They also have well thought-through plans for building on success.”

How are schools doing it successfully?

Ofsted’s 2013 report also sets out the characteristics of schools that are using their Pupil Premium successfully to maximise achievement:

• use data to analyse progress and the causes of under-achievement;• use research evidence;• allocate their best teachers to intervention groups;• give systematic feedback to pupils;• ensure class and subject teachers knew their Pupil Premium pupils

and were responsible for accelerating progress;• monitor and evaluate impact on pupil results; and• involve governors in planning and evaluating.

When should we worry?

Independent 2013 evaluation report and Ofsted 2012 report identified less effective practice, including:

where school are not sufficiently clear about who their disadvantaged pupils are

where schools are not prioritising disadvantaged pupils as intended

where the choices about what interventions or training to invest in are not evidence-based

22

Questions for school leaders, teachers and governors to ask in their schools

• Do we know where the attainment gaps are in our school?

• Do we all know who our Pupil Premium pupils are? Have we accessed the Key to Success ‘download’? https://www.keytosuccess.education.gov.uk/schools/

• How are we planning our activities and targeting them at Pupil Premium pupils?

Questions for school leaders, teachers and governors to ask in their schools cont.

• Have we accessed the evidence of what works to accelerate disadvantaged pupil progress?

• How do we know our activities are having an impact? What evidence are we gathering to share with Ofsted?

• How are we involving parents and carers? Do we have our Pupil Premium statement online?

Today’s conference

Get buy-in at

school

Use evidence to decide strategy

Training in depth

Change practice

Make an impact

Evaluate effective

ness

What next?

And how are we doing nationally…26

27

Links, tweets and contacts

www.gov.uk/government/policies/raising-the-achievement-of-disadvantaged-children

www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/premium

@educationgovuk @johndunford

Alice.chicken@education.gsi.gov.uk

pupilpremium.champion@education.gsi.gov.uk

Questions?