Research School Network: Closing the gap through great teaching, not more interventions Why disadvantaged pupils need better everyday teaching, not busier timetables

When we think about how best to support disadvantaged pupils, the instinct is often to add more: extra phonics sessions, additional reading groups, targeted maths interventions. These decisions are made with the very best intentions. Yet, despite this effort, the attainment gap remains stubbornly persistent.

The EEF’s Guide to the Pupil Premium is clear about why. The strongest strategies for improving outcomes for disadvantaged pupils focus on improving the quality of teaching: particularly feedback, metacognition, oral language and reading comprehension.

When you look closely at the evidence, a clear pattern emerges. While targeted provision has a role to play, the most reliable way to improve outcomes for all pupils, including disadvantaged pupils, is to strengthen the universal offer. Put simply, if we want to make a lasting difference, improving the quality of everyday classroom teaching must be the priority.

The EEF places improving teaching quality at the very top of the list for primary schools (EEF, 2021). Approaches such as explicit instruction, high-quality feedback, metacognition and oral language development show consistent positive impact across early years, key stage 1 and key stage 2. Crucially, these are not programmes to be bolted on. They describe what teachers do every day: how explanations are designed, how talk is structured, how thinking is modelled and how pupils are responded to during normal lessons.

For understandable reasons, many primary schools have historically structured their Pupil Premium strategies around timetabled interventions (EEF, 2025). While these can bring short-term gains, they also come with some real risks.

Pupils can miss whole-class teaching, responsibility for disadvantaged pupils can shift away from the class teacher, and improvements are often difficult to sustain once the intervention ends. Without a strong link to what happens every day in the classroom, the overall impact is often limited.

A more sustainable Pupil Premium strategy starts by asking a simple question: which evidence-informed teaching priorities are most likely to make a difference for disadvantaged pupils in our classrooms (EEF, 2025)? In practice, these priorities should align closely with whole-school teaching and learning approaches including priorities within the school development plan (DfE, 2025)

In our school, this led us to focus on:

• Explicit modelling, where teachers think aloud and demonstrate how to decode, construct sentences or solve problems
• Oral language routines, such as structured partner talk, sentence stems and planned vocabulary rehearsal
• High-quality feedback, focused on improving the learning process rather than correcting every error

Crucially, these strategies needed to be visible across all subjects, not just phonics, reading, writing and maths, and certainly not only within intervention groups.

These approaches do not require new programmes, but they do require focused and sustained professional development.

The EEF’s Implementation Guidance reminds us that changing classroom practice takes more than a one-off training session. Professional development needs to support teachers to practise, refine and embed strategies over time, through ongoing support, monitoring and adaptation.

This process should not be underestimated. Professional learning is inherently collaborative and social, shaped by how individuals think, behave and interact with one another. When professional development is designed in this way, improvements in teaching quality are far more likely to become embedded in everyday practice, rather than fading over time.

The EEF also emphasises that effective Pupil Premium strategies should be reviewed using evidence that shows whether teaching and learning are improving, not simply whether outcomes have changed. In practice, this means looking beyond headline attainment data.

Useful evidence we found included lesson visits focused on agreed teaching strategies, work scrutiny of disadvantaged pupils’ books alongside pupil voice of their learning, pupil voice that explores how classroom routines support learning, and phonics or reading assessments analysed alongside daily classroom practice. Together, these sources help leaders understand whether improvements in teaching are being realised for the pupils who need them most.

• Which teaching strategies are prioritised for disadvantaged pupils in every classroom?
• How do leaders know these strategies are embedded in daily practice?
• What evidence is used to evaluate improvements in teaching quality, not just outcomes?