Research School Network: The Tiered Model For School Planning How can Pupil Premium funding be used in order to have the biggest impact?

How can schools make sure that their pupil premium plans are given the best possible chance of supporting pupils to achieve their potential? Meaningful school planning is not quick. It is a complex process that takes time, thought, and sustained effort. Narrowing down the key priorities is the first essential step in this process. The tiered model for school planning is designed as a starting point to enable school leaders to consider where best to invest time, energy, and resources to have the maximum impact. 

It focuses on three areas:

The evidence tells us that high quality teaching is the most important factor when it comes to improving attainment outcomes, particularly for disadvantaged pupils. Schools should focus on developing teaching practice over a sustained period of time to drive meaningful change. School plans to maximise teaching quality may include:


• High quality daily teaching: the ​‘five-a-day’ approach;
• Improving literacy and mathematics outcomes;
• Securing effective professional development; and
• Using diagnostic assessment to address learning gaps.

Ensuring an effective teacher is teaching in every class, and that every teacher is supported to keep improving, is the key ingredient of a successful school and should be the top priority for Pupil Premium spending. This graph illustrates the impact highly effective teaching can have on pupil progress.

Reflection Questions

Is Pupil Premium funding used effectively to support high-quality teaching to take place in your school?

Do all staff have a shared understanding of what constitutes effective teaching?

Is a framework used to define Teaching and Learning?

Is this evidence-informed?

Does this underpin all High-Quality Teaching activities in your Pupil Premium plans and has this been effectively implemented with all staff?

For pupils in need of additional support, research suggests that providing targeted academic support, carefully planned to meet the needs of individual pupils offers potential benefits.

However, it is important not to fall into some intervention pitfalls which can include:

- Only providing Teaching Assistant led interventions
- Intervention groups including pupils with very different needs
- Teachers are disconnected from the interventions so cannot embed the learning throughout the school day
- Interventions match staff expertise instead of pupil need
- Interventions can lead to social exclusion
- Interventions not being given high enough priority and falling off the timetable

Reflections


It is useful to create a list of the interventions that are taking place within your school.

You can then reflect- to what extent do your interventions avoid these mistakes or replicate them?

Wider strategies address non-academic barriers to success at school that have a significant influence on attainment. Approaches to wider strategies that are likely to support learning include:

The success of these strategies is strongly influenced by whether or not they are implemented with a focus on supportive relationships and strong routines. Prioritising wider strategies can be key for the wellbeing and attainment of all pupils, but will be especially important at transition points, whether the child is moving to the classroom next door or to an entirely new setting. Evidence suggests this is particularly true for pupils with SEND and those from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Reflection

Thinking about a child in your school at the heart of the pentagon below – what are the challenges or barriers within each area? What is going well in each area?

With this tool to help support your thinking, you can reflect on your current wider strategies and start to think about which strategies may need to be a priority to support your pupils.

The EEF School Planning guide offers support to enable teachers and school leaders to identify and address the key areas for development in their settings. It includes practical advice and signposts evidence-informed resources about a variety of areas of teaching practice, from ensuring high quality teaching to removing non-academic barriers to attainment.

You can access the planning tool here –

https://d2tic4wvo1iusb.cloudfront.net/documents/School_Planning_Guide_2022-23.pdf?v=16528158312

Nikki Arkinstall, Operational Lead for Staffordshire Research School.