Research School Network: Using Evidence to Make a Difference for Disadvantaged Pupils How can evidence and research really make a difference to disadvantaged pupils?

Jo Ashcroft, Director of Education for the Aspire Educational Trust and Director of the Aspirer Research School talks about how evidence is used to plan the Pupil Premium Strategy for each of the academies in the Aspire Educational Trust (a MAT of 10 primary academies across the North West, alongside the Aspirer Teaching School and Aspirer Research School). 

At the heart of our vision and guiding principles is a passion and relentless drive for all children to achieve success, regardless of disadvantage. Our approach for improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils is based upon three core principles. Firstly, we really know our pupils; secondly we use evidence informed decision making; and finally we know and reflect upon our impact.

Central to knowing our pupils is the expectation that all of our children can succeed, therefore the focus is upon teachers having total clarity of the barriers faced by their students and the gaps in their learning. Robust Pupil Progress Meetings are held half termly for every class. Each meeting includes a range of professionals involved and working with the children in that class (the Principal, the class teacher, possibly the SENDCo or pastoral staff, plus a member of the Senior Leadership Team from the Trust). The time dedicated to these meetings and the financial investment in enabling them to take place is indicative of their importance; they do take a long time as every single child is discussed, many in great detail. Teachers come well prepared for these meetings – they are ready to talk about their reflections and share pupils’ work and assessments. These meetings illustrate teamwork at its best – all professionals contribute towards the analysis of the barriers (academic and other, anything that could have an impact upon a child’s progress) and engage in dialogue about the actions to be put in place to remove or overcome these barriers. These meetings are entirely child focused and plan how the whole team can work together to support every child.

For school leaders, attending all of these meetings gives them a clear overview of the common barriers faced by pupils in their locality, enabling them to be able to start with the pertinent issues or problems and then look for solutions for these. But how do the schools then decide what the plan should be?

For many years, Aspire has engaged in evidence informed decision making. Kevin Collins (CEO of the EEF) has said ​‘If you aren’t using evidence, you must be using prejudice,’ and this is certainly what Aspire have set out to avoid – hope is not a strategy and every single day of a child’s education counts, therefore we need to know that what we choose to implement is likely to give us the best possible chance of impact. We ask: What does the evidence say? How does that apply to our children, community and teachers? This is true of how we decide about Quality First Teaching approaches and targeted interventions. As a Trust, we have developed a Research Lead role in every school to support school leaders in making these strategic decisions. This person receives termly training, focusing upon critically engaging with and interpreting evidence and unpicking sources of evidence (including the EEF Toolkits and Guidance Reports and Evidence for Impact). Each school in our Trust has its own Pupil Premium Strategy. Underpinning this, each school has its own Intervention and Support Menu, which is referred to throughout Pupil Progress Meetings (slightly different according to pupils’ needs and what works in that school context, but always informed by evidence). There is often approximately 20 – 30 interventions or approaches on the menu (some published intervention programmes, others may have been developed and trialled in the school, but always based upon the findings and principles of sound research). Many of our disadvantaged pupils access a wide range of progressive interventions and support throughout their time in school.

As evidence informed practitioners, each school also creates an in-school evidence base, regularly monitoring and evaluating the effectiveness and impact of the approaches being used. When evaluating, as well as data and pupil work, we also listen to the voices in the field (pupils, teachers, teaching assistants, parents). We have a golden rule that progress is always checked after six weeks – if something is working and we have evidence of impact then it will continue; if an approach is not having the anticipated impact then it is investigated. Anything that does not have a positive impact for an individual child is stopped and new provision put in place; if an approach is not having a high impact at a specific school, then it is removed from the Menu.

This provision mapping for disadvantaged pupils process might seem might seem like a huge amount of work, and it is, but the outcomes for pupils make it worthwhile (three of our schools ​‘bucked the trend’ in 2018, with the disadvantaged pupils achieving above non-disadvantaged pupils nationally). It requires a highly skilled team of staff who are responsive and reflective. This means that we drench the staff in professional learning and engagement with research – we are all learning, all of the time.



Jo Ashcroft
Director of Education at The Aspire Educational Trust, Aspirer Research School and Aspirer Teaching School