Huntingdon Liberal Democrats

Making good use of the Pupil Premium and accounting for it

Making good use of the Pupil Premium and accounting for it

Sarah Teather made a welcome announcement just before Christmas: the government is to increase to increase the value of the Pupil Premium from its current level of £480 to £600 and will extend the range of pupils eligible for this extra funding. The amount allocated for services children will also be increased.

The Pupil Premium will be allocated for every pupil registered for Free School Meals, either currently or at any time in the past six years. This will pick up those families that oscillate along the border-line of poverty. Too many families who are eligible do not register for Free School Meals and this is an issue schools and Local Authorities must address.

Too many parents do not register their children for FSM; sometimes because they don't want to be 'labelled'; sometimes the children don't particularly want to eat school lunch. Being registered for FSM does not require any individual child to actually consume the school lunch on offer, although it would probably be a good idea in nutritional terms for them to do so.

However, the government press release stated that 'Heads can use the extra money as they choose'. This is misleading. While central government cannot and should not tell schools exactly how to use funding, the specific purpose of the Pupil Premium is to improve the life chances of the most disadvantaged. Therefore the Pupil Premium is to be used directly for their benefit. The danger is that, at a time of general financial pressure on schools, this extra income might just disappear into the black hole in the school's budget.

Heads may choose different ways to carry out this requirement - for some pupils it may be extra one-to-one tuition; in other cases there may be an extra teaching assistant for a group of pupils; for others it might be subsidising an enrichment activity. Not all children from financially deprived families under-perform academically but such families cannot afford the 'extras' that others take for granted, like taking part in school trips and foreign language exchange visits, having instrumental music lessons, attending professional concerts and plays or owning a personal computer.

Linking academic progress to specific activities is not easy. Many hours of research have been invested into trying to identify what makes a difference. In May 2011 the Sutton Trust published a 'pupil premium toolkit', developed by academics at Durham University, providing an easily accessible guide for teachers detailing the approaches they should consider when allocating the Government's Pupil Premium. This might help to save Heads and teachers from pursuing expensive but relatively ineffective options.

The most significant gains in attainment come from proven classroom approaches - providing effective feedback on pupil's performance, encouraging students to think about their own learning strategies, and getting pupils to learn from each other. Implemented correctly, these approaches can increase pupils' performance by an extra eight or nine months in a school year for a very low cost.

The toolkit (see box) assesses over 20 different approaches to improving learning in schools, estimating the extra progress over the course of a school year that an 'average' student might expect if this strategy was adopted. It identifies the strength of the existing research evidence and makes an estimate of the costs of adopting the approaches.

In September 2012 the government intends to publish how schools have used their Pupil Premium so it would be a good idea for Governors to bear that in mind when they are working on their school's draft budget this spring.

It will be vital for governors to defend the interests of poorer pupils in their school. They have to approve the budget proposed by the Head and they must insist on seeing exactly how the extra money has been spent. In those schools where the Local Authority still has a significant role, school advisers must enquire about its use. Ofsted should include it in their inspection schedule.

The use (or mis-use) of the Pupil Premium could become an even bigger issue if academies take the opportunity in the new Admissions Code to give admissions priority to Pupil Premium pupils. It would be unacceptable for the already generously funded academies to have an extra source of income and yet fail to use it for the purposes intended.

Peter Downes,

Lib Dem Education Spokesman, Cambridgeshire County Council,

Vice-President, Liberal Democrat Education Association.

Some lessons from the 'Pupil Premium toolkit':

Effective feedback - "One study estimates that the impact of rapid feedback on learning is 124 times more cost effective than reducing class sizes."

Peer tutoring - "Benefits are apparent for both tutor and tutee, though the approach should be used to supplement or enhance normal teaching, rather than replace it."

Homework - "It is more valuable at secondary school level and much less effective for children of primary school age."

Teaching assistants - "Most studies have consistently found very small or no effects on attainment."

School uniforms - "No robust evidence that introducing a school uniform will improve academic performance."

Reducing class sizes - "Overall the benefits are not particularly large or clear, until class size is reduced to under 20 or even below 15."

One-to-one tuition - "Pupils might improve by about 4 or 5 months during the programme, but costs are high as the support is intensive."

Ability grouping - "There may be some benefits for higher attaining pupils, but these are largely outweighed by the negative effects on attitudes for middle and lower performing learners."

The full report can be accessed via www.suttontrust.com/news