Agenda item

1.    The Chairman welcomed the Select Committee Members and James Turner, Deputy Chief Executive, Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), to the Select Committee meeting and she invited all those present to introduce themselves. 

2.    Mr Turner considered that there were three roles his Foundation had in the way that Pupil Premium funding was spent, these were:

a.    By making academic research readily available, accessible and all in one place

b.    By generating evidence and filling gaps in knowledge

c.    By disseminating information and ensuring this had an impact in schools.

3.    Q:  do schools pay for the service of EEF? 

A: no, the guidance and resources were free for schools to use.  The EEF was set up in 2010/11 by the coalition government; it was an independent charity which also received charitable income funds.  The EEF also ran projects which were subsidised but schools were usually asked to pay a contribution to projects. 

4.    The EEF had a social mobility and education equality agenda, it was set up particularly to raise the attainment of those on Pupil Premium to give young people the best academic start in life as well as focusing on non-academic progress. 

5.    EEF worked to build up an evidence base of knowledge as a tool to raise attainment and to focus limited resources and effort.  It was important to know where and how funding was spent in schools.

6.    Q:  is enough good practice being shared?

A:  James Turner explained that the landscape was changing all the time, how good practice was shared was more complicated today than it was in the past, some of the suggested practices were low or no cost and it was necessary to work across the whole class as well as targeting some pupils if they were falling behind their peers. 

7.    A Member referred to ‘effective feedback’ within the toolkit, in her experience teachers were told to change their feedback regularly, it was a very top down approach and this was difficult and often not cost effective.  James Turner stated that the toolkit was intended as a gateway to the evidence: there were numerous ways of implementing effective feedback but for policies such as triple marking for example there was no evidence that this was successful.  The toolkit was designed for schools to discuss and to determine how it could work best in each school.  Rather than adding to the teacher burden, it was meant to reduce it.    

8.    Q: is there any evidence for effective feedback success stories with Pupil Premium children?

A:  it was very difficult to monitor how well effective feedback was working, teachers needed resources and continuing professional development to ensure effective working. 

9.    Q:  referring to the support through the transition years, particularly primary to secondary it was understood that there was less engagement at secondary than in primary and what more could KCC do to try to encourage assistance during transition, perhaps through the Kent Association of Head Teachers?

A:  James Turner offered to circulate to Members work undertaken on transition, in 2011 there was funding available as ‘catch-up premium’.  It was considered that even the best catch up programme did not make up for the average gap between Pupil Premium children and their peers.  It was important to invest in children early on and to prevent gaps arising if at all possible.  The Pupil Premium funding was still important in secondary schools where the gap between Pupil Premium children and non-Pupil Premium children widened, in addition England lagged behind many other countries with a wide gap at secondary school. 

10. Q:  why is the gap widening at secondary school? 

A:  James Turner considered that the existing funding could be spent more cost effectively and it was vital to ensure that it was targeted at the students it was intended to help.  Very importantly, England had a very segregated secondary school system, children from lower income families were more likely to go to school with children from the same background and this had a knock on effect teacher recruitment and retention etc.  This was not an issue just about grammar schools however because even if grammar schools were removed, the top comprehensives had few Pupil Premium children in them.

11.Q: What is the toolkit and what are its benefits?

A: it was a tool for ensuring academic research was placed into the hands of practitioners.  It contained strands that teachers might employ to improve standards in their classroom.  Each strand looked at the average month’s impact you might get from implementing it, the average cost and the security of the evidence behind it.  This was a gateway of information but the disadvantage was that it was potentially a blunt tool.  It was a place to start a conversation about what evidence was most useful and most applicable.  The toolkit was available to schools free on the EEF website.  2/3 of senior leaders stated that they used the toolkit but there would be different levels of engagement.

12. The toolkit contained a mix of different approaches which could be used alongside teaching, there was no intention to add to teachers’ workload and approaches should be considered within the confines of cost and time.

13. Q:  how effective is using FSM as a measure or definition of children who need additional support? 

A:  James Turner explained that, on balance, while FSM was imperfect, it was widely available and eligibility was a good predictor of educational disadvantage. 

14. Q: Regarding having small or large numbers of Pupil Premium children in cohort what were the advantages and disadvantages?  

A:  James Turner explained that the relative FSM gap existed in all types of school with different Ofsted ratings.  His understanding of the research was that some schools with large cohorts of FSM students had tailored their provision to that group and did particularly well; in some schools with smaller cohorts, the schools were unsure how best to spend Pupil Premium funding. 

15. Q:  Was there a correlation between amount of Pupil Premium money and those providing high impact on progress for Pupil Premium children?  Members had undertaken a visit to a school which had 50% Pupil Premium students and was an outstanding school.  The School clearly had an outstanding model of utilising the funding received; Members were interested in whether the model was being used elsewhere. 

16. Q:  Regarding early years intervention what was in place to reduce the price of early years help?  

A:  James Turner explained that improving teaching across the board for Pupil Premium and non-Pupil Premium students was a journey for schools. The more schools improved performance and tackled issues the less need for remedial work.  There was a need to make some of the work as cost effective, and therefore as sustainable, as possible.  Lots of early years programmes were available but these were often very expensive and it was important to ensure that the programmes had an impact.

17. Q:  Members asked about the targeting of 2 year olds, to ensure they were ready for primary school.

A:  James Turner explained that there was a huge potential for provision for 3yrs+ to prepare students to learn.  By the time children were at primary school the gap already existed.  There were challenges around recruiting and training the early years workforce.  It was difficult to find really good early years programmes with good evidence behind them, and it was then important to ensure that the provision continued throughout the school years.

18. Members considered that in some instances some academically able Pupil Premium children’s result got worse throughout school and some non-Pupil Premium children improved, it was thought that some of this was due to parental engagement and aspiration.  James Turner stated that the evidence was clear that the home environment played a huge role, learning did not only happen at school.  Parental involvement was critical in the performance of students; this was strongly correlated with academic and social mobility outcomes.  There was a question over how best to help parents who were less involved to get involved?  Programmes to date which had been tested by the EEF had had limited success.  Low cost ways could help a little; some schools had trialled keeping in touch with parents via text message.

19. Members recognised the challenges presented.  It was worrying to see numbers of ‘don’t know’ on pg 36 of the agenda pack in relation to ‘to what extent does the Pupil Premium Grant allow your school to: Target resources to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils?  There was a need to embed information on Pupil Premium Grant in teacher training and this to be continued through continuing professional development.

20. Q:  Referring to the importance and focus on early years Members found it difficult to understand that there was a lack of early year’s programmes.  Did EEF publish early year’s programmes?

A:  James Turner explained that EEF had only recently started looking at early years, but there were a number of projects which would be reporting soon, EEF was trying to build evidence base but this was a relatively new challenge.  Head teachers could go to the website and look at early years toolkit and also completed evaluation projects. 

21. Q:  Had EEF undertaken an evaluation of the reasons behind the UK being out of line in relation to the gap between Pupil Premium children and their peers, what this because less was spent on early years and there being more child poverty and a lack of aspiration?

A:  EEF evaluated programmes rather than international comparisons.  However, the Sutton Trust and others had shown that when the education model in the UK was compared with other countries the UK did not always come out well in terms of investment in early years and social mobility measures.  The gap was quite big; at age 4 there could be one year between FSM child and non FSM child.

22. A Member suggested that EEF could visit ‘good’ feeder nurseries and look at their early years programme; this could produce robust evidence to go alongside anecdotal evidence.

23. Q:  What could KCC do, if anything, to improve the effectiveness of Pupil Premium in raising the educational attainment of vulnerable pupils and in narrowing the attainment gap? 

A:  James Turner explained that there were two elements:  awareness raising and continuing professional development.  In addition there was a need to ensure head teachers and teachers were aware of evidence-based resources and how accessible they were.  The most effective schools in an area could be used as champions, as EEF were doing through Research School. 

24. Regarding champion schools, Members suggested that there should be a system to ensure financial input into those champion schools.  This financial input might then give teachers the time to go beyond their own schools and talk to other schools.  Or similarly rewards for schools which are doing well at closing the gap, James Turner explained that there had been a tranch of Pupil Premium awards but at present there was no financial recompense.  It would be beneficial to have some money in the system for schools that were doing well to share their ideas.  James referred Members to the Strategic School Improvement Fund which was a grant to support schools and aimed to target resources at the schools most in need to improve school performance and pupil attainment; to help them use their resources most effectively.   

25.The Chairman thanked James Turner for attending the meeting and for answering Members’ questions.