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  • Agenda item
  • Agenda item

    Steve Ward, Deputy Principal, Oasis Academy, Isle of Sheppey

    Minutes:

    1.            The Chairman explained that Mr Ward was present in place of John Cavadino, the Principal of the Oasis Academy, who was unable to attend at the last minute.  She thanked Mr Ward for attending at short notice.

     

    2.            Mr Ward outlined his role as the Deputy Principal of the Oasis Academy and explained that it covered a broad range of responsibilities which included working with pupils with SEN and those who were the most able. 

     

    3.            He explained that the Isle of Sheppey was unusual in terms of its educational history in that it had retained a middle school system until the early 2000s.  It now had an academy which was split between two sites, one in Sheerness and one in Minster.  The demographics of the two areas were quite different in that Sheerness experienced more severe deprivation than Minster.  As an area which was largely rural as well as coastal and was at the edge of the county, Sheppey had had limited economic investment and so offered limited employment opportunities and limited transport options.  Teachers were difficult to recruit and many pupils did not have access to the mainland and had never left the island.  Although the situation had improved in recent years, there was still improvement needed.

     

    4.               Some 40% of Oasis Academy pupils were in receipt of pupil premium, a level which was way above the national average rate of 15-20%.  At the Sheerness site, the number of pupils in receipt of pupil premium was 54%, and it was known that some pupils did not declare their eligibility to claim pupil premium.  This was partly because parents did not want to be seen to be poor.

     

    Mr Ward then addressed the list of questions prepared by the Research Officer and published as part of the agenda pack.

     

    5.            The focus of pupil premium in the 2017/18 academic year was to address five elements; attendance, attainment, teaching and learning, site consistency and hardship. In setting each year’s focus, the previous year would always be reviewed.

     

    Attendance – this was below the national average at 93%, having risen 1% since the 2016/17 academic year.  However, this was an average figure, and the actual attendance could sometimes be as low as 78%.  A consultancy, SOL, had been engaged to help the academy to address its attendance rate. The parents of absent pupils would be given a daily phone call, with a home visit being made if absence continued longer than three days. Although the academy had the power to start, or threaten to start, formal proceedings at that stage, staff took the view that this step would not be helpful, knowing the circumstances of the families concerned. The aim was always to achieve full attendance. Although 90% attendance may sound good, this meant that one in ten school days (one day a fortnight) had been missed.

     

    Attainment - there was a gap in the attainment between pupils in receipt of pupil premium and those not. In all subjects, pupils in receipt of pupil premium were 0.3 of a grade below those not in receipt of pupil premium and the academy was committed to reducing this gap. Staff would identify pupils who were underperforming. It was known that pupils who were more able academically were still more likely to make better progress than those less able, regardless of the pupil premium status of either group, although pupils in receipt of pupil premium had more behavioural issues. The overall picture was complex and had many aspects to it. 

     

    Teaching and learning – the recruitment of good teachers was a challenge as potential candidates were put off by the poor economic and social reputation of the island and the transport difficulties it presented to anyone commuting there daily. The academy’s poor rating from its most recent Ofsted inspection also did not help, as this made it difficult to attract good candidates for teaching posts.  Work was in hand to improve the academy’s performance and reputation but it would need to be able to demonstrate some sustained improvement in results before potential teachers would be willing to consider it as a career move.  The academy was working to ‘grow’ its own staff from among local people and those who had previously attended as pupils, and by using the Teach First programme.

     

    Site consistency and hardship – work was in hand to reduce the gap in the percentage of pupils in receipt of pupil premium at the academy’s Sheerness site (54%) and its Minster site (45%).  Eligibility for pupil premium varied across the island as degrees of deprivation varied substantially. Pupils from areas of greater deprivation experienced challenges such as a lack of correct uniform or suitable shoes and attendance at school without having had breakfast, and had more behavioural issues than those in less deprived areas. For those pupils, the academy would help by buying suitable shoes and uniform, by running a breakfast club and by providing free extra tuition. 

     

    6.            Parents would be introduced to pupil premium as an available resource at the communal welcome meetings which took place when pupils started Year 6, and each family would also have a private meeting with a member of staff at which more detail about pupil premium would be given to them. From these meetings, it was clear that some parents were unaware of pupil premium as a resource, but for others, the problem with applying for it was pride and not wanting to appear poor. A high number of families moving from other schools and areas, for example, from London, also meant that some were less aware of pupil premium.  It was important also to ensure that, for families who had previously been eligible for pupil premium in another Local Education Authority, this eligibility followed them so they could continue to claim. 

     

    7.            The attainment gap of 0.3 of a grade between pupils in receipt of pupil premium and those not was narrowing, and the overall picture improving, and the gap was now within floor standards.  This progress had been helped by measures which it was possible to put in place as a result of pupil premium funding. These included outward bound camps for more academically able pupils, which involved confidence-boosting activities such as rock climbing and abseiling as well as revision sessions in science and English.  The DfE changes to move away from the inclusion of course work to exam-only GCSEs had been a challenge for many pupils, so the academy had introduced measures such as the outward bound activities to seek to boost pupils’ confidence and make learning fun. Another such measure was a science project being undertaken by some more academically-able Year 11 pupils with PhD students from …?.. University, in collaboration with the Science Museum.  However, funding for this sort of project was very limited and only ten children could take part. 

     

    8.            As well as the attainment gap, there was a social gap between pupils in receipt of pupil premium and those not and this should not be overlooked.  Children knew who among their classmates had pupil premium.  The social stigma around pupil premium needed to be eradicated.

     

    9.            There was a threshold of circumstances which led to families becoming eligible for pupil premium. Levels of deprivation varied greatly across the island and in some places there was very little employment.  Parents who had not had a good experience of school when they were young would not tend to value education, and families in which no-one had been to university would tend to have a narrower scope of education and employment ambition. The academy sought to encourage more students to aspire beyond level 1 apprenticeships and courses and to continue to university. Students taking part in the science project had already started to say that they wanted to go to university.  Many pupils had to content with a number of challenges such as drug and alcohol use at home, cramped rooms shared with siblings and lack of privacy or quiet space in which to undertake study at home.  For some children, school could feel like an extension of early help or social work intervention, but the academy had a good record of working with parents to encourage children back into school.  

     

    10.         The most successful interventions using pupil premium had been a maths GCSE project run by a maths specialist in 2017, the science project mentioned earlier and a project called ‘Period 7’, which offered pupils an extra session of tuition at the end of the day.

     

    11.         The County Council could help improve the effectiveness of pupil premium by encouraging more work with the early help team, with a more joined-up process, and possibly more work with and support for years 6 and 7 as pupils transitioned from primary to secondary education.  The early help service could be enhanced and could work with schools to address attendance issues by speeding up the legal process by which this was addressed. Pupil premium was a challenging area of work with a great impact and Mr Ward said he  would wish to see it protected by being ring-fenced.  Pupil premium should be used just for pupils who were eligible for it, and not for any other purpose.  It was known that some schools used their pupil premium allocation to bolster staff salaries. 

     

    Mr Ward then responded to comments and questions from the Select Committee.

     

    12.         Asked about the financial aspect of going on to higher education, and how pupils from poorer households might manage student debt, Mr Ward acknowledged that this was part of the picture for any student considering higher education and that media coverage of it would inevitably have made an impression on pupils potentially considering higher education.

     

    13.         Asked about attendance and the external organisation which was working with the academy to address this, Mr Ward confirmed that the academy used part of its pupil premium payments to pay them.  The SOL consultancy tracked cases of pupils missing school and used a colour coding to identify the severity of cases and pupils who were improving by moving them from one colour to the next.  This system was easy for pupils to understand and acknowledged their progress in improving their attendance, and had shown an overall improvement.  Good attendance made a real difference to the grades which a pupil could expect to achieve, with some pupils in receipt of pupil premium rising a whole grade once attendance had been improved. However, it proved difficult to persuade parents of this.

     

    14.         Asked about how pupils who could not afford uniform were identified and assessed, Mr Ward explained that cases were approached individually with the best interests of the child always uppermost. Setting a rule that any child attending without school shoes would not be permitted to participate in lessons had increased compliance, but any child who had broken their shoes, or whose family was genuinely unable to afford school shoes, could expect to be treated sympathetically.  It was easier for the academy to buy a child a new pair of suitable shoes than to exclude them from lessons.

     

    15.         Mr Ward confirmed that every school was legally obliged to publish the level of pupil premium that it received and that the Oasis Academy had included on its website that its pupil premium allocation for the current academic year was £671,000 and had set out how this has being spent.  Sometime pupil premium was spent in a way that meant all pupils would benefit from it, while other projects were targeted at pupils in receipt of pupil premium only.  There were sometimes barriers between pupils in receipt of pupil premium and those not , and the need for some pupils to have help in buying uniform or who had free school meals made it possible to identify who had pupil premium and who had not. The academy worked to build the resilience of those facing hardship and any bullying was taken very seriously and dealt with promptly. The academy sought to develop more unity between pupils in receipt of pupil premium and those not, and had recently introduced a payment system in the canteen whereby all pupils paid for their meal with a swipe of a finger rather than with cash, meaning no-one stood out as different or as not having cash.

     

    16.         Parents knew which other parents were in receipt of pupil premium, so pupils also knew who among their classmates had it, and those with it felt that they were disadvantaged.

     

    17.         Attracting and retaining teaching staff was made difficult by the academy not having a good Ofsted rating, as many teachers would not move to teach in a school with a low rating. To improve recruitment and retention rates, the academy would need to be able to demonstrate improvement by the time of its next Ofsted inspection. However, to make and demonstrate improvement rapidly was difficult.  To help in the meantime, the academy would ensure that it made good use of the ‘Teach First’ initiative.  Teachers local to Sheppey were easier to attract and retain, but maths and science teachers were in short supply. The academy also placed a high priority on looking after the welfare of its teaching staff. 

     

    18.         The early help service could be strengthened by the service having an office at the academy, as could other services such as CAMHS. The academy was seeking to integrate these services as far as possible and this integration would shortly be proposed to the County Council.  The academy sought to avoid the use of pupil referral units and keep pupils at the academy and work with them there.  Once a pupil had gone to a pupil referral unit it could be hard to get them back into mainstream school.

     

    19.         Asked what would be his three priorities with which the County Council could help, Mr Ward listed the following:

     

    ·         attendance – he would seek extra support and collaboration with the KCC to address attendance rates,

     

    ·         an early help centre at the academy, with close working and integrated services, and

     

    ·         a coach to take pupils on outings, as it currently cost the academy £500 each time it wanted to book a coach to take pupils out of school.  This did not include any other costs related to the journey, for example, an admission fee for whatever they were going to visit. 

     

    20.          Asked what percentage of children never had the opportunity to leave the island, Mr Ward estimated that this was about 25% of the academy’s roll.  Because the island had limited train services and erratic bus services, and many families had insufficient income to afford a car, most could not aspire to visit London, and even a visit to Maidstone seemed a major undertaking.  Sheppey did have a very strong sense of community, and this was its biggest strength.  However, children still needed much encouragement to raise their educational and employment aspirations.

     

    21.         Mr Ward was asked about his suggestions and aspirations for the future of pupil premium.  He said he would like to see it properly ring-fenced so its use could be more closely controlled. The DfE needed to look at tightening up on what PP could be spent on.  It was known that some schools did not spend it well and used it to bolster staff salaries and to compensate for deficits in other areas of school funding.  It was noted that County Council-run schools were not permitted to be in deficit.  Mr Ward added that to have a Deputy Head Teacher for pupil premium would help to ensure that it was being properly spent. However, that post would need to be funded from pupil premium.

     

    22.         Select Committee Members commented that, to get a clear and full  picture of the use of pupil premium, they would need to be able to identify which schools were using it well and which ones not so well and if it were possible to identify any pattern of good or bad use amongst certain types of school.

     

    23.         The Chairman thanked Mr Ward for giving his time to attend as a substitute at short notice and help the Select Committee with its information gathering.         

     

     

    Supporting documents: