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
Average pupil performance on the 2012 PISA mathematics assessment,
by quarters of socio-economic status
640
Key
●----------------------x----------------------x---------------------●
600
560
Hong Kong-China
Macao-China
Estonia
520
Finland
Canada
OECD average
480
PISA 2012
440
more
disadvantaged
-2.5
-2.0
England
more
400
-1.5
-1.0
-0.5
0.0
0.5
Index of pupil socio-economic status
1.0
1.5
2.0
5
"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
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
8
Our policy incentives
Funding
Evidence on
effectiveness
School
Interventions
Incentives
Better
information
Inspection
Pupil
Premium
reviews
9
Funding
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
10
School
interventions
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
12
Inspection
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
13
Pupil
premium
reviews
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
14
Better
information
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
15
Evidence of
effectiveness
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.
EEF teaching and learning toolkit
16
Feedback
Approach
Average
impact
Cost
Feedback
8 months
££
Evidence
estimate
Summary
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.
19
Other activities
John 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)
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.
22
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
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?
What next?
Make an
impact
Change
practice
Get buyin at
school
Today’s
conference
Use
evidence
to decide
strategy
Training
in depth
Evaluate
effective
ness
And how are we doing nationally…
26
27
Links, tweets and contacts
www.gov.uk/government/policies/raising-the-achievement-ofdisadvantaged-children
www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/premium
@educationgovuk
@johndunford
Alice.chicken@education.gsi.gov.uk
pupilpremium.champion@education.gsi.gov.uk
Questions?