Research School Network: Reviewing and refining your Pupil Premium Strategy: seven steps and helpful evidence-informed resources Pupil Premium Strategy

This is a short blog on updating Pupil Premium strategy documents. A more detailed blog I wrote about planning, implementing and evaluating your Pupil Premium strategy can be found here.

Context

A school’s Pupil Premium Strategy documents need to be updated and published by 31 December 2022.

Assuming schools adopted a longer-term approach in 2021/2, there is no requirement to produce a brand-new template. Rather, just note that you are in year two of three, and make changes to any contextual information. State clearly the stage you are at in working towards the intended outcomes and success criteria as set out in the plan – for example, ​‘year two of three for a plan that covers the academic years 2021−2024’.

The DfE reporting guidance is clear about this – including on their example templates available here:: ​‘If you are starting a new pupil premium strategy plan, use this blank template. If you are continuing a strategy plan from last academic year, you may prefer to edit your existing statement.’

When revising, refining and updating your strategy, it’s helpful to consider whether your approach has the following ​‘Active Ingredients’. Without these, it’s much more difficult to achieve long term goals:

The EEF Guide to Pupil Premium and the associated evidence brief are helpful resources to have utilised within the process of reviewing and refining your strategy.

A RAG rating tool
we have developed may also help with reflections and refinements. This resource may help school leaders and implementation teams to carry out ongoing assessments of the progress they are making in addressing educational disadvantage.

Seven possible next steps:

1.You may decide, based on reflections, that your intent statement needs refining to best reflect your ambitions for your disadvantaged pupils in your community.

2. Depending on your assessments and observations, you may want to refine your challenges, especially if the nature of the disadvantaged cohort has changed. This super blog from Shotton Hall Research School on the use of diagnostic assessment in reading which acts as a great example the importance of precise assessment for a needs led strategy (and avoiding a label led approach).

3. Similarly, based on your ongoing quality assurance and adjusted challenges, you may wish to adjust the intended outcomes and success criteria too – these link together. They should be ambitious and reflect the intent of your plan.

4. Given any changes to the challenges, including challenges with implementation, you may wish to adjust activity. You may wish to stop doing things too! The section on research evidence is included to help us make informed discussions. This may need updating too. For example, the EEF has recently published useful guidance on tuition and an evidence review on attendance
earlier in the year.

5. The review of last year’s activity (section B) should be a reflection on the progress you are making towards achieving the long term intended outcomes and success criteria – as set out in your strategy – that are to be achieved at the end of the plans time frame, using short- and medium-term indicators. Qualitative and quantitative measures can both be helpful. For example: ​‘Attendance for disadvantaged pupils has improved from 92.5% in 2021 to 93.9% in 2022 – we are on track to meet and sustain our target of 96% in 2023/24. Parents and pupils surveys indicate that the vast majority are clear about expectations around attendance and how partnership working is more effective. Our use of evidence has helped make our strategy more effective and targeted.’

6. You may also wish to include any further reflections at the end of section B – in the ​‘further information’ section – about how your strategy is evolving over time and any wider work you are involved in – including system improvement, engagement with research evidence etc.

7. The National Governance Association have developed some excellent strategic resources about developing a strategy to address disadvantage. These can be accessed here.

And finally…

What’s important is that the published strategy remains a live, active document, and not a dormant PDF that sits on a school website.

The questions in the reporting template are designed to help us to continually reflect on our ambitions for our current disadvantage cohort, the challenges they face, how we’ll overcome them and understand whether we have been successful. Continual refinement is key. As Professor Jonathan Sharples says: ​‘Implementation is a process, not an event’.

Super examples from colleagues across the country include those from Wilbury Primary School in Enfield, Grange School in Manchester (Special) and Durrington High School in West Sussex.

Marc Rowland – Unity Research School