Making the pupil premium go further

Most schools face standstill budgets, or real terms cuts. But some of the school budget is growing, and will grow further. The pupil premium, worth £600 this year, rises to £900 next year and could reach £1200 per pupil by 2015. The challenge for schools is how to use that money where it will have most impact – and there is a case for incentivising effective practice.

The pupil premium was part of both the Liberal Democrat and Conservative manifestos. It had two important roles: firstly, to narrow the attainment gap between pupils on free school meals and their classmates, and secondly, to encourage successful schools to take more disadvantaged pupils.

Previous governments have provided extra resources for such pupils through extra funding to local authorities with high levels of poverty. Nevertheless, the Institute for Fiscal Studies has pointed out that pre-premium extra funding in the system attached to deprived pupils amounts to £2000 in primary schools and £3000 in secondary schools. And that has had variable impact.

But this is the first grant paid to schools for each disadvantaged pupil, regardless of where the school is located. The Government decided against ring-fencing the premium, relying instead on schools publishing details of spending on their websites and extra league table measures.

But there is mounting evidence that the premium is not being used as intended (nor is there any evidence that is changing admissions behaviour). Ofsted reported last month that often schools did not disaggregate the pupil premium from their main budget, and said that the funding was often used to maintain or enhance existing provision.

The National Foundation for Education Research, in a survey of 1700 teachers in 1200 English schools for the Sutton Trust earlier this year, showed that little of the pupil premium allocation for 2012-13 – a sum worth £1.25 billion in total – was likely to be spent on activities proven to be the best bets for boosting attainment. Many would spend it on staff rather than improving teaching.

But there is evidence of the most cost effective approaches to improving standards. Researchers at Durham University assessed 21 different interventions for both impact on attainment and relative cost and helped the Sutton Trust to create a toolkit which a growing number of schools are using priorities for the premium. The toolkit will be updated and expanded by our sister organisation, the Education Endowment Foundation, in 2013.

The Sutton Trust/EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit shows that there are three strategies that schools can undertake with a high impact at relatively low cost. Using evidence from here and abroad, they calculate that each of these strategies can provide the equivalent of between six and nine months extra learning, at a cost of around £170 per pupil.

The single most effective strategy is improved pupil feedback, which should be an important part of a school’s drive to boost the quality of teaching and learning. Other low cost proven methods include teaching pupils to learn effectively and peer tutoring, where young people help each other to learn.

Of course, a growing number of schools are already turning to the Toolkit for ideas, and a new version will be online early next year. However, there is surely a case for the Government to help give proven ideas a further boost.

As the size of the pupil premium pot grows, why not use some of it to match fund schools’ spending on proven strategies? It is not as if the Government is opposed to ring-fencing any of the premium; Nick Clegg has used it to fund summer catch-up schools.

So, why not have a pot which schools where schools could double a proportion of their premium provided they spent it on a menu of proven activities? With a little extra incentive, ministers might find that the pupil premium went a lot further.

This post also appears at the Sutton Trust blog.

Why shouldn't parents rate schools?

What does Christine Blower, the general secretary of the National Union of Teachers, do when she wants to book a hotel? Presumably given her comments today on Ofsted's new Parent View website, Ms Blower completely ignores Trip Advisor and the ratings on other booking websites posted by those who have stayed there. Her reason: they are too 'subjective'.

Ofsted's site will give parents the chance to rate their children's schools on issues such as standards of teaching and behaviour, but also on happiness and the levels of communication with parents. Now, I may be mistaken here, but isn't such a rounded view precisely what the NUT has been demanding for ages? Indeed, one might have more sympathy with their objections to the site if they were staunch advocates of objective measurement of schools. But they have opposed testing and league tables since their inception, and I can't remember them ever being enthusiastic fans of independent inspections either.

The new Parent View site may take a little time to gain the level of parental input to make its judgements valuable. There may be the occasional problem if a school faces a determined campaign against it. But, as outstanding schools are no longer to be inspected, the site could alert inspectors to potential problems: if they investigate and find otherwise, it is better than not knowing of a problem until it is too late for many pupils. And in a world where people do want to see the views of other service users, the site also has the potential to offer an additional valuable perspective for parents interested in the quality of local schools.

The balance of risk and regulation

Matthew Taylor has already raised some pertinent questions about the power of regulators, after a seminar that he expertly chaired at the RSA yesterday. There is a particularly interesting debate underway in government, reflecting some of the schizophrenia that surrounds the whole issue of regulation and accountability.

Over the past 20 years, there has been a transformation in attitudes to data within the public sector, particularly in schools. It isn't just about high profile league tables, though their presence has undoubtedly spurred some improvement. As important has been the ability of schools to compare their performance with others with similar characteristics, and to benchmark themselves against the best in their field with the help of organisations like the Fischer Family Trust. Familiarity with data, a rarity 15 years ago, is now universal among school leaders. For the coalition, this data is at the heart of their accountability agenda, and in an education system where many of the levers have been withdrawn and market forces are largely absent as a result of the admissions system, an ever-increasing supply of data is the seen as the biggest driver of improvement.

The corrolary of this is that regulators like Ofsted, the schools inspectorate, are expected to do more with less. Michael Gove, the education secretary, is facing growing opposition in the House of Lords to the idea that schools designated outstanding, even if that designation is several years old, should not be re-inspected unless there is a significant change in the data or substantial parental complaint. Gove has decided that such schools are low risk compared with the failing and barely satisfactory schools where he wants Ofsted to focus its resources.

There is nothing new in the idea that such interventions should be in proportion to their success. Michael Barber's phrase informed an approach to inspection that did focus resources on the weakest schools and saw inspections of the most successful reduced to short visits as little as every six years. But there is a big difference between short six-yearly visits and none at all. For a start, the expectation of a future Ofsted visit is as important as the visit itself in spurring improvement, and this is as true in successful schools as any other. Then, the evidence suggests that a significant minority of outstanding schools are less successful on re-inspection. Inspectors themselves need to know how good schools can be if they are to set their sights high enough for those that don't make the grade. And, as Gove himself acknowledged, even many outstanding schools may not reach that grade in their teaching and learning, and need to be encouraged to do so.

At the heart of all this is a debate about the balance between risk and regulation. Inspectorates are there to reveal what is wrong, but also in doing so to encourage public services to do better. Ofsted has had remarkable success in this since its inception, and has arguably been as important to the improvements of the last twenty years as league tables and other published data. Gove has set himself ambitions for England to become a world-beater in education over the next five years. In doing so, he is accepting that schools have improved, but is insisting they need to do much better. Is there a danger that he has made his goal harder by reducing pressure on those schools that need to be at the vanguard of such global ambitions? Where should that balance lie?

Not inspecting outstanding schools would be a big mistake

In between his shaky defences of Lord Ashcroft, Michael Gove announced yesterday that outstanding schools - so deemed by Ofsted - would not be inspected ever again under a Conservative government. This could be a big mistake, for two reasons. It would make it harder to define other schools as outstanding without inspectors having visited the gold standard, and harder for Ofsted to spread the secrets of their success. An inspection in an outstanding school is rarely the burden it is for others, rather a chance to show how its done. And secondly - and perhaps more importantly - schools designated outstanding now could quite easily lose their high standing without some pressure to maintain it. A change of head or a new curriculum could make the difference. And while a school may continue to show good exam results for a time, the failure to have regular inspections could disguise a dip until pupils had fallen behind. To be fair, Gove no longer plans to abandon testing in primary schools, so there would be some independent evidence of progress. But a school could still coast for years before parents or other concerned parties trigger an inspection. By all means, have a lighter touch system for the best schools, keeping their inspections on a six year cycle, or the threat of lightning sampler inspections, but don't abandon all inspections of schools that are great today. Because they may not be tomorrow.

Shooting the messenger

I have written this post about today's Ofsted annual report and the attendant controversy around inspections for the Public Finance blog:

Today’s Ofsted annual report has both good and bad news. There has been a substantial increase in the number of ‘good’ and ‘outstanding’ schools – the equivalent of 1800 extra good schools in three years – but there remains a stubborn group where teaching is poor.

More needs to be done to improve literacy and numeracy at every level. And an increasing number of local authority children’s services departments is rated inadequate. Some of the problems being highlighted have been the focus of earlier reports. But the evidence is also that the focus of accountability – and independent inspection – is making things better.

Yet this year’s report has been accompanied by an unusually loud chorus of criticism from those who see themselves as the victims of Ofsted. The Local Government Association complains that the inspectors look for trouble too much. The National Union of Teachers says it doesn’t give schools that don’t get decent overall GCSE grades top marks even if they do well on the government’s value added measure. And the Association of Directors of Social Services thinks that the inspectors have got too tough, and that’s making it harder to recruit social workers.

One reason why the criticism is louder is that Ofsted inspects much more now than before. As well as schools, its role extends to nursery education and childcare, further education colleges, training providers, children’s social services and local authority children’s services departments. And the current chief inspector Christine Gilbert inherited an inspection regime where enforced efficiencies led to more reliance on data and less on classroom or frontline observation.

Those systems are changing. School inspections since September include more of what happens in the classroom. And together with spot inspections, inspectors talk more to social workers than before. Even so, data can reveal truths too. I doubt many parents would think a school – no matter how challenging its intake – could be deemed ‘outstanding’ if 75% of its pupils failed to meet the basic GCSE benchmark.

Of course, there is a legitimate debate about the government’s decision to merge so many children’s services and education functions, and on the weight given to the Every Child Matters objectives that are now part of the inspection mix. But the bottom line is that Ofsted remains an invaluable asset because of its independence and its willingness to act without fear or favour. And its findings can still make uncomfortable reading for governments as much as they do for some schools and service providers. Which is as it should be.

In the end, today’s detailed annual report throws a far clearer light on the strengths and weaknesses of many of our public services than the special pleading of those who should focus on their own improvement – rather than shooting the messenger

Improved inspection can help standards

The chief inspector, Christine Gilbert, has announced a consultation on a more proportionate new approach to school inspections, with more resources targeted on the weakest schools and less frequent inspections for good and outstanding schools. There will also be more time spent observing lessons - the reduction in classroom observation went too far with earlier reeforms. And there should be less reliance on contextualised value added alone in making judgements. Taken with experiments over no notice inspections and more opportunities for parents to trigger inspections, this is a good package of reform which should focus attention where it is needed most.

At her press conference, she also signalled a belief that standards have 'stalled' in recent years in both primary and secondary schools. Although there have been modest improvements in primaries - and stronger improvements in secondaries, especially academies - there is no doubt that a reduction in pressure on schools to achieve in the early part of this century led many primaries in particular to de-emphasise English and Maths. That pressure has now started to be restored - and, so long as ministers aren't distracted by dotty proposals to abolish testing or targets - there is a good chance of serious improvement in the years ahead, not least with stronger phonics and maths teaching. And the new inspection regime should help in that goal.

The reading revolution is working

Two pieces of good news on reading in schools today. First, Ofsted reports that phonics has become more embedded in primary schools than was thought: there is still a challenge in one in five schools, but the report suggests that the revolution started by the Rose review is having a real impact. Second, the government's Every Child A Reader catch-up programme is helping those who need extra help to learn to read. Both measures mean that the progress made in the early years of testing and the literacy strategy is now being renewed after a hiatus. The important thing is to make sure that phonics is taught first and fast, and the success of the recovery programme doesn't detract from that goal with the vast majority who can and should learn to read earlier. Moreover, it also shows a Labour government continuing to deliver where it matters, whatever the polls say.

Parent power in the post-bureaucratic age

Today's schools policy paper from the Conservatives confirms what we already expected in some areas - an emphasis on phonics, support for academies and strong support for accountability. The main news surrounds their plans to create '220,000 new school places' in disadvantaged areas by 2016. In fact, their policy differs little from that of the Government. 400 new academies will create around 400,000 new school places by the middle of the next decade: their sponsors will include many of those cited by the Tories.

What is different is the suggestion that these proposals will emerge spontaneously from parents and others. There have been some such proposals - the law was changed to require local authorities (since earlier this year) to do a proper feasibility study to test their merit. Sure, this may sound a bit bureaucratic in this 'post-bureaucratic age'; but the point is that the numbers are not what the Conservatives imagine. Moreover, with 150 academies running in a couple of years' time, the dynamics of parental demand will have changed still further. So, by all means, give such proposals a push, but my guess is that a government agency - perhaps the Schools Commissioner - will need to simulate demand.

Incidentally, having reconciled myself to this new 'post-bureaucratic age', my jaw dropped when I read the following:

We will also extend the inspection powers of Ofsted further, so that inspections will be more detailed and last longer, and every teacher in every subject will be inspected during Ofsted’s visit.

Now nobody is a greater fan of inspection than me - and there may be a case for more subject inspection than there is now - but this is a recipe for huge and disproportionate bureaucracy, especially in the best schools. Combined with near compulsory setting in every academic subject, also to be imposed by Ofsted, the concept of free schools is well and truly dead.
UPDATE: John Rentoul offers his take in the new Independent blog site, Open House here.

The results season

If August is the month when young people learn their GCSE and A-level results, October has become results season for the government. Yesterday saw the publication of Christine Gilbert's annual report as chief inspector (pdf). Today, the government has published the national levels of achievement at GCSE, while the Public Accounts Committee has issued its latest verdict on academies. To judge by some of the headlines, you might imagine the school system has got worse over recent years. But here are a few interesting things you might have missed.

“But academies are intended to raise educational achievement in deprived areas; lower results compared with secondary schools overall do reflect the circumstances and prior attainment of the pupils. If academies’ performance is adjusted for these factors, then on average it is substantially better than that of secondary schools overall" - Edward Leigh, Tory Chair of the Public Accounts Committee. Press release accompanying PAC report.

"Ofsted’s increased monitoring of schools about which we have concerns, including a number of schools we judged to be satisfactory, is paying off: we are finding that progress in around nine out of 10 of these schools is at least satisfactory. The Annual Report offers some encouragement. Inspections of academies are beginning to confirm a rising trend in effectiveness; there are examples of strong and effective leadership having a positive, and sometimes transformational, impact on pupils’ progress and achievement, often from a low base. Improvements in London schools, especially those in the most challenging circumstances, are outpacing those found nationally; clearly the investment provided by London Challenge is strongly associated with these improvements." - Christine Gilbert, Chief Inspector of Education; annual report p6

The percentage of pupils achieving 5+ A*-C in the 36 Academies has almost doubled since 2001 (the last year of checked data for predecessor schools) from 22.0% in 2001 to 42.2% in 2007. If we include English and mathematics the increase is 10.2 percentage points from 14.0% to 4.2%. Nationally the increase is 11.5 percentage points for 5+ A*-C and 7.4 points for 5+ A*-C including English and mathematics - DCSF Statistical press release SFR 34/2007

Also, Ofsted, which rightly toughened its inspection criteria a couple of years ago, has found 13% of primary and secondary schools to be outstanding, merely a 'slight' increase from 10% last year sniffed the Guardian. Actually, translated across all schools, it means the number of outstanding state secondary schools is up from 320 to 416, the number of outstanding primaries has risen from 1800 to 2340, while the number of inadequate schools has fallen by a quarter.

The schools revolution

We regularly read in the press claims either that standards haven't risen or have deteriorated under Labour, this despite factual evidence showing the contrary to be true. What has also happened in recent years - a change familiar to most people working in schools - is that there has been a big cultural shift in school staffrooms, where there are nearly 150,000 more support staff than a decade ago. (And, yes, that is where a lot of the extra money for education has gone). Given how important this is to the real world of schools, it is perhaps unsurprising that a report from Ofsted earlier this week describing the impact of such changes in schools went largely unnoticed. Here are some of its key findings:

• More than three quarters of teachers interviewed believed they have greater control over their work and more time to plan lessons, mark books and collaborate with colleagues thanks to a "revolutionary shift'' in school working practices.


• Teachers felt they had greater control over their work, had time to plan collaboratively, develop resources, keep up with assessment and liaise with colleagues, improving their lessons as a result.


• Most schools believed strongly that standards were rising as a result of the reforms.


• Pupils are benefiting from increased support from this wider workforce. Deploying adults with different skills is allowing schools to improve the care and guidance for vulnerable pupils and those at risk of exclusion.
  
• The reforms were helping to extend and enhance the curriculum in nearly three quarters of the 99 schools visited.