Research School Network: Monitoring and evaluating your Pupil Premium Strategy When and how you check on actions related to your Pupil Premium spend is vital

The Pupil Premium Strategy is an important statutory document for all schools, helping to guide effective spending of pupil premium funds. Time, care and energy will be spent in creating these plans, with nearly 90% citing education evidence¹ in their plans.

However, in many ways the PP strategy document is just a window into the more complex, nitty-gritty reality of efforts to support pupils in school – and crucially to sustain those efforts. How can we make sure we are checking the impact of chosen actions and making refinements where necessary?

The PP document guides spending over a 3 year period and allows opportunity for reflection on previous years, but the very nature of a document like this means it cannot truly speak to the range of monitoring and evaluation required. The EEF’s Pupil Premium Guide², particularly Recommendations 4 and 5, help take this further.

Recommendation 4: Implement strategies with fidelity and flexibility
Monitoring plays a key role here — it helps leaders identify whether interventions are being applied consistently and whether staff have the necessary training and support. Flexibility is also crucial; schools must be responsive to emerging challenges and adapt their approaches when needed. Without ongoing monitoring, schools risk continuing with strategies that are poorly executed or no longer fit for purpose.

Recommendation 5: Evaluate impact and refine approach
Evaluation is vital for understanding whether Pupil Premium strategies are making a measurable difference. This involves collecting data on pupil outcomes — academic, behavioural, and social — and comparing them against clear success criteria. Evaluation should be both formative (to inform mid-course corrections) and summative (to assess overall effectiveness).

What tools can be used?
The Implementation Guidance Report³ references this table in the explore and sustain phases with ideas for different mechanisms to check pupil needs and the impact of actions.

Careful monitoring and evaluation will need to consider the when of the different measures: a classic short, medium and long term approach here can be helpful here. For example, if looking at the impact of attendance measures:

Short: pupil surveys expressing their opinions on school
Medium: internal attendance data for PP and non-PP pupils compared to the previous year
Long: attendance data for PP and non-PP pupils compared to local and national data

If looking at the impact of some work around supporting reading in the classroom:

Short: pupil interviews expressing their opinions on reading and the support provided
Medium: lesson observations to see how the approach is being used in lessons
Long: reading age data

Effective evaluation also supports accountability. It enables school leaders to report to governors, parents, and Ofsted with confidence, showing how funding is being used and the impact it is having. Moreover, it fosters a culture of continuous improvement, where decisions are guided by evidence rather than assumptions.

In a bid to complete the statutory document, it is understandable that ongoing monitoring and evaluation measures can be missed, or pushed further down the road. But to truly maximise a PP strategy, planning for when and how these checks will take place is crucial for schools and education settings.



Join us for our Pupil Premium course, starting on October 6^th with three sessions during the year designed to help with the ongoing monitoring and evaluation of PP strategies.



For further reading in this area

1 A blog on most common focus areas on PP strategies Attendance and reading key barriers to disadvantaged pupils’… | EEF
2The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium | EEF
3A School’s Guide to Implementation guidance report | Education Endowment Foundation