Research School Network: Challenges: getting under the hood – part 3 Phil Stock’s latest blog moves on from the Pupil Premium Strategy’s Statement of Intent and considers the Challenges section.

If the Statement of Intent is the vision for your school’s disadvantaged strategy, the Challenges section is where you lift the bonnet and diagnose precisely what your strategy needs to address.

Too often, though, this section reads like a laundry list of vague or generic problems rather than a clear, evidence-informed diagnosis of specific challenges faced by real pupils in a real school.

Phrases such as ​‘attendance is low’, ​‘parents have low aspirations’, or ​‘pupils lack cultural capital’ not only rely on deficit language, but also fail to specify what the actual barriers are for disadvantaged pupils, or what the school intends to do differently in response.

1. From laundry lists to precise diagnosis

If the challenges are not clearly understood, the subsequent activities are likely to be muddled and lacking precision.

So, how should schools identify the challenges faced by their disadvantaged pupils?

This is a question I often ask school leaders, and their responses usually begin with statements about knowing their children, their families, and their needs. Schools are rightly proud of the strength of their relationships with home and often see this as the best way of understanding what needs to be addressed.

2. Focusing on what schools can influence

The problem with the above approach, however, is that it can shift attention away from what schools can influence and into the realm of wider societal factors that they cannot.

It also carries the risk of making assumptions about what families and children need – whether that’s more cultural capital, improved language skills, better parenting, or broader opportunities.

3. Using evidence, not assumptions

Without a sharper evidence base, strategies risk being driven by perception rather than precise diagnosis. It is easy for teachers and leaders to fall into the trap of assuming what pupils and families are lacking, and then designing school provision to compensate. 

This is how strategy documents can end up with a ​‘laundry list’ of generic issues and, worse, how deficit views of disadvantaged pupils and their families can take hold.

The definition of educational disadvantage set out in the previous blog gives us a clearer lens. If we understand disadvantage as the impact of social and economic circumstances on attainment, then our focus should be on where pupils are falling behind academically, whether disadvantaged or not.

That means moving beyond assumptions and instead using robust diagnostic assessment to surface the specific challenges that sit ​‘under the hood’ of disadvantage.

4. The role of standardised assessment

While no assessment is perfect, it remains the most reliable way of identifying which pupils are likely to need additional support to improve their attainment. A robust standardised assessment helps to remove bias and provides a clear, objective starting point for further investigation.

For example, a standardised reading assessment highlights pupils who are performing below age-related expectations. A follow-up diagnostic assessment can then pinpoint the precise area of that difficulty, such as reading fluency. Teacher feedback and reviews of pupil learning can also provide valuable additional insight, but this should only come after an initial screening process, not in place of it.

5. Looking beyond attainment: wider diagnostic tools

Leaders are, of course, also interested in how social and economic circumstances affect wider aspects of pupils’ development, such as their emotional wellbeing, social skills, or sense of belonging. Internal information, such as attendance or exclusion data, can provide useful starting points.

As with academic assessments, though, these should act as initial screeners, prompting deeper exploration rather than standing alone as definitive evidence. Low attendance, for instance, doesn’t tell you specifically why some pupils are absent.

Once initial screening data has highlighted possible areas of concern beyond attainment, leaders can turn to more precise tools to deepen their understanding.

Pre-validated surveys and structured diagnostic measures can help uncover challenges that are less visible in day-to-day school life but have a significant impact on pupils’ engagement and outcomes.

For example, belonging and connectedness surveys can provide insights into how included pupils feel in the life of the school – a critical factor, given the strong links between belonging, attendance, wellbeing and attainment.

Similarly, surveys that probe aspects of pupils’ self-regulation or executive functioning can help schools identify where difficulties with working memory, attention, or emotional control may be acting as barriers to learning.

These kinds of tools offer two advantages:

1. They provide a structured and reliable way of gathering information that might otherwise rely on informal teacher impressions.
2. They make it easier to track change over time. By repeating the same validated survey periodically, schools can see whether their strategies are genuinely improving pupils’ experiences and capabilities, not just their attainment.

6. Be wary of in-house surveys

Schools often rely on their own survey to provide them with this information, or adapt surveys they have found elsewhere, such as the survey items Ofsted use before they visit schools. The problem with this approach is that these surveys are not really statistically sound. Because they are not pre-validated – in the same way that a standardised reading or maths assessment is validated as a scale – these kinds of in-house surveys are probably not really assessing what you think they are assessing.

As an aside, Greenshaw Research School is currently developing a set of pre-validated scales that school leaders can use to gain more accurate, precise information about their pupils’ wider development and engagements. This work will include scales on belonging, connectedness, attachment and other important areas of non-academic development such as motivation, self-esteem and social relationships. If you would like to find out more about this survey, do sign up to our introductory webinar.

7. Signalling the evidence in your strategy

It’s helpful to signal how a more precise diagnosis of the challenges that disadvantaged pupils face has been arrived at through the phrasing of the challenges on the strategy document.

Following the simple formula of evidence → linking word → challenge makes it clear to staff, governors and families how the school has used robust data and evidence to identify the barriers for socially and economically disadvantaged pupils.

• exclusion rates suggest anxiety and mental health issues
• standardised tests indicatelow reading comprehension
• teacher feedback implies metacognition and self-regulation
• survey data signifies lack of belonging to community
  

Diagnose precisely what your strategy needs to address

Getting under the hood of disadvantage means moving beyond assumptions and generic lists to a sharper, evidence-informed understanding of the real challenges your pupils face.

When challenges are precisely defined, the strategies that follow are more likely to be focused, coherent, and impactful.

By combining robust academic assessments with well-chosen diagnostic tools for wider needs, schools can build a clear picture of where to target their effort, and how to know if those efforts are working.

In the next blog, we’ll turn to the Outcomes section of the strategy and explore how to set clear, ambitious, and measurable goals that create the conditions for real change.