Research School Network: Writing your School’s 2023 – 24 Pupil Premium Strategy Reflections, advice & reminders from our 2022 – 23 experiences

Through numerous partnerships with Local Authorities and MATs, the Staffordshire Research School were fortunate to work closely with local leaders on a range of projects and evidence-informed strategies in 2022 – 23.

One aspect of this work involved us reviewing over 150 Pupil Premium Strategies, analysing common themes identified by schools for the Challenges and Activities they were focussing on and had decided to invest funding, resources and staffing capacity in. In doing so, we were able to learn about the strengths, areas for development, inconsistencies, errors and points of reflection that emerged during the reviews. For the benefit of all (school leaders, teachers and students), we have distilled our reflections into a concise list of ​‘check-ins’.

Too many activities?

• We found some schools had taken a ​‘kitchen sink’ approach to the number of activities that they planned to implement to address disadvantage gaps. Their motivations and aspirations were admirable, but pragmatism must ensue. Often the number of High-Quality Teaching and Targeted Academic activities and strategies listed in PP strategies were in double figures and in some cases above 20! In contrast, some plans were very focussed and had 1 or 2. How many have you planned?

Obviously, due to a number of factors, the volume of challenges and required activities will vary between schools, but: 

• Do schools and their teaching staff have sufficient capacity to implement these to the extent to which they are embedded in one academic year?
• Do senior and middle leadership have sufficient time and resource to monitor and evaluate the number of activities to effectively evaluate their impact?
• Is there sufficient time in the school’s CPD calendar to develop the knowledge, understanding, modelling, rehearsal, and evaluation of the activities? Or has the CPD for this year already been allocated to other School Improvement related tasks that do not necessarily ​‘talk to’ the PP Strategy or have disadvantage at their core?

Reflect on the ratio.

• It is widely communicated and understood that high-quality teaching and teachers have the greatest impact on student progress. The DfE and EEF’s guidance suggests that focussing a greater proportion of activities in this area, albeit context specific, could lead to greater gains for disadvantaged students in school. Our exploratory work within partnerships last year showed that schools had a greater number of identified activities and proportion of budgets allocated to Targeted Academic Support and Wider Strategies than for High-quality Teaching strategies. The EEF’s Tiered Approach guidance does state, ​‘Many strategies will overlap categories, and the balance between categories will vary throughout the school year as priorities change.’ (EEF, 2021). The PP strategy is far from static, once it has been written and uploaded to the school’s website. It should be organic, allowing for responses to school developments that occur throughout the year.

• What is the ratio of activities between High-quality Teaching, Targeted Academic Support and Wider strategies in your school?
• Is this reflective and representative of where the greatest ​‘gains’ are needed in school? 
• How frequent is the PP strategy reviewed for the relevance of activities each year, not just for progress towards each activity? Is this planned or done on an ad0hoc basis? 

Language check

• The PP Strategy is a public facing document on your school’s website, fully accessible to community stakeholders. In our reviews we saw statements that focused on deficits and used negative language (e.g. ​‘parents lack aspiration’ or ​‘Parents lack education and skills to support reading/​student learning’ or ​‘students lack role models at home’). We are not questioning these can be very real challenges schools face, more so to consider framing school challenges more positively to support community and school relationships (e.g. ​‘support parents to engage more positively with learning’, ​‘provide opportunities to expose children to role models in school that they may not get to engage with outside of school’) or consider having an internal version of the strategy and a public facing version with adjusted language on your school website.

Dovetailed strategic planning?

• We found that for many schools, main school improvement plans for 2023 – 24 commenced around summer term 1, with a lag-time existing before PP Strategy evaluation and planning taking place for most in Summer 2, school holidays and Autumn 1& 2 to be ready for publication by the DfE’s deadline of December 31^st.
  • Are PP Strategy & School Improvement Plans planned concurrently and collaboratively, or at different times of the academic year or by different leads?
  • If the PP Strategy is written after the SIP, do the two align on high-quality teaching priorities for teachers and is the rationale and benefit clear for how such priorities can benefit disadvantaged students? Each strand of the EEF’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit has a tab called ​‘Closing the disadvantage gap’ which supports this narrative.

Shared with staff?

In an exercise we undertook we discovered that in approximately 60% of responses, the strategy had not been shared school teaching staff and TAs. 

• Which parts of the PP Strategy (relevant to their roles) are shared with which staff?
• Do they know what they are expected to implement with clear success criteria?

Whilst this is not an exhaustive list, and there are many other sources of advice for writing PP Strategies (see additional links below), we hope if offers PP leads an opportunity to reflect on when drafting and tweaking their school’s PP Strategies for 2023 – 24, a job most likely undertaken this Autumn term.

Nathan Morland, Staffordshire Research School Director.

Additional resources and sources of advice

• Marc Rowland, Unity Research School – helpful advice and a Disadvantage Strategy RAG rating tool of themes to reflect on – https://researchschool.org.uk/unity/news/reviewing-and-refining-your-pupil-premium-strategy-seven-steps-and-helpful-evidence-informed-resources
• National Governance Association’s Disadvantage in Education resources, including toolkits for Poverty, Ethnicity, SEND, Vulnerability and Mental Health & Wellbeing – https://www.nga.org.uk/knowledge-centre/disadvantage-in-education