A critical reflection on the reasoning behind,and effectiveness of,the application of the Pupil Premium Grant within primary schools

Reasoning behind the Pupil Premium Grant

The great number of policies introduced by New Labour, and the rate at which they were changed, made it virtually impossible to determine which, if any, were effective in narrowing the attainment gap (Whitty and Anders, 2014). This is emphasized by Goodman and Burton (2012), who identify the vast array of new approaches to schooling frequently introduced by different governments over many years, the majority of which are aimed at ‘closing the gap’. Despite the number of initiatives introduced by the New Labour Government, by 2011 the national attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children was still very large (National Audit Office [NAO], 2015).

The Department for Education deems a child to be disadvantaged if they are, or have been, eligible for means-tested free school meals, or if they are, or have been, looked after by a local authority (NAO, 2015). Children who are classified as disadvantaged perform more poorly at school in comparison to their peers (NAO, 2015) – this is referred to as the above-mentioned attainment gap. It was the perceived ineffectiveness of the New Labour initiatives in closing the attainment gap (Whitty and Anders, 2014) that led the Coalition Government to introduce the Pupil Premium Grant to English schools in 2011. The Pupil Premium Grant is additional, ring-fenced money which is given to publicly funded schools to raise the attainment of all pupils classified as disadvantaged (Department for Education [DfE], 2017). At the time it was implemented, it had two primary purposes:

to improve outcomes for disadvantaged learners; and

A child is classified as disadvantaged for 6 years (Ever6), resulting in schools receiving the Pupil Premium Grant for each child for up to 6 years after they have been classified (Education Funding Agency, 2017). As well as closing the attainment gap, it was also hoped the introduction of the Pupil Premium Grant would increase social mobility and enable children classified as disadvantaged to access the top universities in the country (Macleod et al., 2015).

Closing the gap?

The Pupil Premium Grant was declared by the Coalition Government as the means by which disadvantaged children would ‘…be enabled to benefit from the same opportunities as pupils from richer families’ (O’Connell, 2017: 16); however, research has shown that social inequalities have never truly been successfully addressed within schooling (Office for Standards in Education, Children’s Services and Skills [Ofsted], 2016; Outhwaite and Pass, 2016; Reay, 2006; The Social Mobility Commission, 2016).

Despite the vast amount of money which is ring-fenced for additional provision for children who are classed as disadvantaged – in the academic year 2017–2018, £1320 per disadvantaged child is planned to be allocated to primary schools and £935 per child allocated to secondary schools (Education Funding Agency, 2017), at a total of approximately £2.4 billion (Jarret et al., 2016) – the attainment gap between the disadvantaged and their non-disadvantaged peers is now larger than identified in previous focus areas, i.e. the gender or ethnic minority gaps (The Social Mobility Commission, 2016). In 2016, 39 per cent of children classified as disadvantaged achieved the expected standard in reading, writing and mathematics at Key Stage 2, compared with 60 per cent of all other pupils – a difference of 21 percentage points (DfE, 2016a). There is a similar pattern with progress; children classified as disadvantaged achieved an average progress score of –0.7, –0.3 and –0.5 in reading, writing and maths, respectively, compared with 0.3, 0.1 and 0.2 average progress score for all other pupils (DfE, 2016a). The Cabinet Office (2011) have further highlighted the scale of the attainment gap through the bold statement that by the age of 5, children classified as disadvantaged are roughly 8 months behind their peers in terms of cognitive development.

Despite awareness from over 10 years ago that our education system only serves middle-class interests (Reay, 2006), ‘the differences between disadvantaged children and their better-off counterparts are (still) stark’ (Ofsted, 2016: 14). So why has ‘the deep-seated social gradient in how well children do in school not been flattened?’ (The Social Mobility Commission, 2016: iv) – in other words, why has the Pupil Premium Grant not yet achieved its aim?

Quality First Teaching

Countless policies are implemented by governments with the sole purpose of closing the attainment gap and ensuring children who are classified as disadvantaged are able to access the same high-quality teaching and education as their peers (Goodman and Burton, 2012). The phrase ‘closing the gap’ is one which is repeatedly used within political agendas, but it could be argued that this is placing a ceiling upon what pupils are able to achieve. High expectations are imperative, regardless of a child’s background (Macleod et al., 2015); the focus has to be on raising attainment for all children and not simply closing any gap between those who are classified as disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children (Rowland, 2015). High expectations and ambitions are key to enabling success for all children, and this ethos must be embodied by its leaders, as well as run through the very heart of a school for it to be truly effective with children who are classified as disadvantaged (Rowland, 2015). If high expectations are to be embedded within a school, they must be exhibited and displayed by all members of staff within that setting, particularly the teachers (Dann, 2016). This, coupled with high-quality teaching for all (Macleod et al., 2015), is the foundation upon which further interventions can be built in order to ensure approaches like the Pupil Premium Grant are understood as more than just another political strategy aiming to ‘equalize’ education (Shain, 2016).

As The Social Mobility Commission (2016) highlights, access to Quality First Teaching is a powerful way to encourage and support social mobility. The effects of high-quality teaching are even more significant for children classified as disadvantaged. When taught by a poorly performing teacher, children who are classified as disadvantaged make 0.5 years of progress over the school year, whereas when taught by a high-performing teacher these same children make, on average, 1.5 years of progress (The Sutton Trust, 2011). Regardless of leaders’ approaches, attracting teachers to weaker schools and disadvantaged areas is a difficult task (The Social Mobility Commission, 2016), with over half (53%) of teachers interviewed by The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission (2014) stating that the increased pressure of working in a weaker school would be a significant deterrent. The current teacher training is not preparing teachers to work with children who are classified as disadvantaged (Burn et al., 2016; Goodman and Burton, 2012; Reay, 2006), and if the emphasis continues to be on blaming schools rather than acknowledging the social realities of poverty (Burn et al., 2016), the percentage of teachers actively avoiding the pressures of working with children from disadvantaged backgrounds will only increase.

It could be argued that teachers – the ones actually in the classroom, the ones dealing with the day-to-day life of children who are disadvantaged, the ones who know them best – rather than politicians, are the ones who can identify what will ‘diminish the difference’ between socioeconomic status within classrooms. Leaders are given autonomy from politicians in the use of the Pupil Premium Grant; there are no set criteria determining how school leaders should spend it, only the requirement for it to have the necessary impact. Nevertheless, education cannot be divided from politics; as Youdell (2011: 7) states, ‘Schooling and politics are inseparable’. Sahlberg (2017) extends Youdell’s views through placing Georges Clemenceau’s famous quote that ‘war is too important to be decided by the military people’ within an educational context, arguing that education is too important to be decided by teachers.

However, without Quality First Teaching led by those who are experienced in its delivery, the Pupil Premium Grant will not, by itself, solve the problems of ‘closing the gap’. The common theme throughout the research into successful spending of the Pupil Premium Grant is the need for high-quality teaching, more commonly referred to as Quality First Teaching (Dann, 2016; Macleod et al., 2015; Ofsted, 2016; Shain, 2016; Sylva et al., 2014; Watt, 2016). Without this, interventions are merely a sticking plaster – Quality First Teaching is the base for effective classroom practice (Brooks, 2016). In each of the aforementioned research projects, the leaders’ primary focus in each school was to improve the Quality First Teaching all children accessed on a daily basis. Leaders approached the improvement of teaching in a variety of ways, through: additional training and professional development (Ofsted, 2016); deploying staff effectively (Macleod et al., 2015); offering higher salaries to encourage higher-quality teachers (NAO, 2015); and strong and positive leadership (Dann, 2016). Only once teaching was consistently secure did additional interventions start, ensuring they were having maximum impact on children classified as disadvantaged.

Political early intervention?

Governments have consistently funded early intervention programmes (Allen, 2011 and Simpson et al., 2015), thereby focusing the attention of head teachers on any child in the Early Years Foundation Stage in danger of not reaching a Good Level of Development. In 2000, all 4-year-olds in England became entitled to free part-time early education, with 3-year-olds becoming entitled to the same in 2005. More recently, funded pre-school places for 2-year-olds classified as disadvantaged were made available, as attending high-quality pre-school can protect against some of the risks associated with disadvantage (Sylva et al., 2014). Data suggest that free childcare places – another political intervention – encourage more parents from lower socioeconomic backgrounds to enrol their child in formal childcare or early education than those from higher socioeconomic backgrounds (Blanden et al., 2014), supporting Sahlberg (2017) and Youdell (2011): ‘after parenting, good quality early years provision has the biggest impact on children’s development by age five’ (Cabinet Office, 2011). The Pupil Premium Grant started as a political intervention, decided upon by government – not head teachers, teachers or schools – yet the positive impact of it is clear; 94 per cent of schools now target support at disadvantaged pupils, compared with 57 per cent before the Pupil Premium Grant began (NAO, 2015). Furthermore, the introduction of the Early Years Pupil Premium in April 2015 further focused attention on the very young who are classified as disadvantaged, highlighting their attainment and areas of need and providing the funding to close the attainment gap from the very beginning (Ofsted, 2016). Nearly half of all children classified as disadvantaged do not make a Good Level of Development by the end of their Reception year – that is, they do not have the essential knowledge, skills and understanding they should have by the age of 5 (Wilshaw, 2016), hence the need for this additional focus. No teacher identified these as areas of need; they were, again, government initiatives that continue to support Sahlberg’s (2017) and Youdell’s views (2011), as highlighted previously.

Schools’ and leaders’ accountability

Whilst the introduction of the Pupil Premium Grant has focused politicians’ and schools’ attention on decreasing the attainment gap between children classified as disadvantaged and their peers, it has also increased accountability for teachers and leaders. Schools must report on the progress made by, and attainment of, children classified as disadvantaged and how the data compare to non-disadvantaged children nationally. They must write an action plan for the spending of the Pupil Premium Grant, identifying in what areas of the school the money will be spent, the impact this will have and how it will be measured. Teachers are held to account rigorously by Ofsted with regard to the progress disadvantaged children are making in their classrooms and what is being done to ensure any attainment gap is closing; although leaders must report on the progress of all children within their school, there is an additional level of accountability attached to children classified as disadvantaged. The pressure is most felt in schools classified as ‘more challenging’ in lower socioeconomic areas with the associated high levels of Pupil Premium Grant funding (The Social Mobility and Child Poverty Commission, 2014). Despite the recent importance politics has placed on getting the ‘brightest and best’ into teaching, specifically in schools identified as ‘more challenging’ (Social Mobility Commission, 2016), more than half of teachers (59%) surveyed by Menzies et al. (2015) had considered leaving teaching in the previous 6 months. Complaints of unrealistic targets, increasing accountability linked to specific groups of children (including those classified as disadvantaged) and a curriculum which is ‘overhauled’ regularly have resulted in stressed and fed-up professionals who are leaving education and taking their, often years of, experience with them (Doherty and Gerrard, 2017).

Teachers feeling overwhelmed by political change is not a new situation; nearly 30 years ago, the redevelopment of schools’ curricula by administrators was deemed ‘deskilling’ to teachers, and showed as ignoring the differences between socioeconomic backgrounds which characterize schools and students (Giroux and McLaren, 1989). Despite the Coalition Government introducing the Pupil Premium Grant in 2011 with the hope of ‘levelling’ these differences in socioeconomic backgrounds (Macleod et al., 2015), curriculum changes controlled by politicians are still taking place. The phonics test was introduced in Year One in 2013; the new National Curriculum was published in 2013 and required to be taught from 2014; the Spelling, Punctuation and Grammar test was introduced in 2013 for the end of Key Stage Two; the Standard Attainment Tests in Key Stage Two were redesigned and launched in 2016; and, since September 2016, the General Certificate of Secondary Education has been reformed for all subjects (DfE, 2015). Consultation periods did take place, and it could be argued that the government therefore sought views from teachers and those who work first-hand with children classified as disadvantaged. Over 22,763 responses were received (DfE, 2015), but as there were 957,800 (DfE, 2016b) full-time equivalent school workforce employees in November 2015, this is equivalent to a mere 2.4 per cent of the people actually working with children classified as disadvantaged day in, day out – hardly a proportionate view. For the Pupil Premium Grant to work and be successful in closing the gap, the political and professional strands of leadership within the education sector must work together to build upon the small improvements currently being made. If the pace is not increased, at least a further three generations could be lost before ‘equality of outcomes is realized through our education system’ (Andrews et al., 2017).

The impact of parents and carers

Alongside political agendas and schools’ personal philosophies, parents/carers (from here on referred to as parents) are not always considered in depth when examining socioeconomic differences and the associated impact on children. Article 5 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that ‘Governments must respect the rights and responsibilities of parents and carers to direct and guide their children as they grow up, so that they can enjoy their rights properly’ (UNICEF, 1989). As a result, parental involvement is a key factor in determining children’s ‘school readiness’ and, in turn, their educational achievement (Campbell, 2011; Dann, 2016; Goodall and Vorhaus, 2011). Despite parental involvement being consistently associated with children’s success at school, there have been a limited number of studies investigating how increasing parental engagement improves attainment, especially for families classified as disadvantaged (Education Endowment Foundation, 2017; Watt, 2016). The lower the socioeconomic group, the ‘harder to reach’ parents are (Watt, 2016); this perpetuates the attainment gap. As further discussed by Watt (2016), the possible lack of material resources and negative attitudes within the lower socioeconomic groups towards education are also reasons as to why children classified as disadvantaged have parents who are less likely to be engaged with their learning.

However, schools that have shown success in raising the attainment of children classified as disadvantaged have used the Pupil Premium Grant effectively to engage with parents and increase their involvement in their child’s education (Macleod et al., 2015). Clear messages about the lifelong impact of learning must therefore be shared with parents (Dann, 2016); strong bonds must be forged between school and home, with decision-making being a collaborative process (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, 1994) involving all participants. Over 7 years ago, the Cabinet Office (2011) highlighted how children with parents who are more engaged with their education are more likely to succeed; schools which have raised the attainment of children classified as disadvantaged have often worked hard to engage their parents and welcome them into the school (Watt, 2016). Watt identifies five main strategies successful schools use to encourage parental involvement and engagement: regularly inviting parents into school; teaching parents how to teach; educating parents to increase aspirations; regular communication; and friendly, caring and firm communication (Watt, 2016: 37–39). Often through the employment of a Family Support Worker, the Pupil Premium Grant was used by the ‘outstanding’ schools Watt (2016) studied to specifically target parents of children classified as disadvantaged and engage them in their child’s education, thus raising attainment and positively impacting on their education and home–school links.

These outstanding schools demonstrate how successful use of the Pupil Premium Grant needs the political, professional and parental elements to work together: the creation of a ‘PPP triangle’ to ensure children classified as disadvantaged have the best possible outcomes from their early education.

What approaches work within primary schools?

Leaders within schools have taken a variety of different approaches to diminish this difference between children classified as disadvantaged and their peers; ultimately, the responsibility for spending the Pupil Premium Grant lies with schools (NAO, 2015). Ofsted (2016) identifies the positive impact schools have had through using the Pupil Premium Grant to employ a speech and language therapist, thus attempting to contradict the Hello campaign’s (2011) research into delayed language skills in children from different socioeconomic backgrounds. Macleod et al. (2015) identify schools successfully raising the attainment of children classified as disadvantaged through meeting individual learning needs and not applying a ‘one size fits all’ approach; children who are classified as disadvantaged are not all the same (Rowland, 2015). Shain (2016) identifies the enrichment approach some schools have taken, offering ‘middle-class’ experiences for children who would otherwise be unlikely to access these activities. Dann (2016) examines the impact teaching assistants funded through the Pupil Premium Grant have on the progress and attainment of children who are disadvantaged, finding it to be, in the majority, very positive, and in disagreement with the Sharples et al.’s (2015) findings. Finally, Watt (2016), as previously discussed, identifies the positive impact spending the Pupil Premium Grant on parental involvement and engagement can have on the education of children classified as disadvantaged. What schools choose to spend the funding on is up to them (Shain, 2016) and, as schools are best placed to lead on and support the education needed by children from disadvantaged backgrounds (Wilshaw, 2016), this is one of the most influential and important decisions schools make. The most successful schools have high expectations and aspirations for all children, regardless of their socioeconomic background (Rowland, 2015). Effective schools focus their spending of the Pupil Premium Grant on strategies which will work for the children in their school who are classified as disadvantaged, using evidence-based research paired with strategic, long-term vision and an ethos which is embedded throughout the school that all children deserve to succeed.

It could be argued that this view is naïve and simplistic, and that the idea a school’s success at raising the attainment of children classified as disadvantaged can be improved simply by copying what other successful schools have done is outdated and antiquated (Thomson, 2014). Best practice in one school is not necessarily best practice in another (Thomson, 2014) – evidence-based interventions run in one school may raise the attainment in maths in Key Stage One dramatically, yet have minimal impact when repeated in different settings. Dann (2016), Watt (2016) and Shain (2016) all highlight very specific case studies, charting interventions which were carefully chosen for individual children’s needs and hence had very specific, and measurable, impact. In a different school, with different children classified as disadvantaged, the impact may not have been as great – so how do schools spend the Pupil Premium Grant in order to have the most impact on the lives of children who are classified as disadvantaged?

Schools where leaders have spent the Pupil Premium Grant effectively are also clear about the need to ensure that children who are disadvantaged receive the experiences their more advantaged peers take for granted (Ofsted, 2016). Enrichment features heavily in the feedback from leaders in the aforementioned research projects, highlighting the need for using the Pupil Premium Grant to help pay for children who otherwise would not be able to access trips, activities or after-school clubs. Providing enrichment and alternative provision as well as academic support develops the whole child, and with social, emotional and mental health needs on the increase (Reeve, 2016), ensuring that the well-being of children classified as disadvantaged is also at the heart of Pupil Premium Grant spending will only serve to further reduce the attainment gap.

Conclusion

If ‘children’s life chances are most heavily influenced by their development in the first five years of life’ (Cabinet Office, 2011: 25), again raising the importance of parental impact, can the impact of the Pupil Premium Grant be sustained when it is solely used within schools and targeted at children older than 5? Being disadvantaged has a considerable detrimental impact on children (Ofsted, 2016), starting from conception and impacting on their lives and education up to the point at which they leave school (Cabinet Office, 2011). Despite the numerous government initiatives, research studies and strategies used within schools (Shain, 2016), there is no quick fix to such a deep-rooted issue. It was over 10 years ago when Reay stated, ‘Social class remains the one educational problem that comes back to haunt English education again and again and again; the area of educational inequality on which education policy has had virtually no impact’ (Reay, 2006: 304).

It truly is a reflection on the ‘State of the Nation’ that, 10 years later, The Social Mobility Commission stated that ‘From the early years through to universities, there is an entrenched and unbroken correlation between social class and educational success. Repeated attempts to reform the education system have not produced a big enough social mobility dividend’ (The Social Mobility Commission, 2016: iv). Whether the Pupil Premium Grant will have the desired effect and significantly contribute to ‘closing the gap’ for children classified as disadvantaged is yet to be universally substantiated.