The Pupil Premium How to Spend it Wisely

1. The Pupil PremiumHow to Spend it Wisely Robert Coe Director of the Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring (CEM) and Professor of Education, Durham University

2. Why are we here? CEM aims to • Create the best assessments in the world • Empower teachers with information for self-evaluation • Promote evidence-based practices and policies, based on scientific evaluation

3. CEM activity • The largest educational research unit in a UK university • 1.1 million assessments are taken each year • More than 50% of UK secondary schools use one or more CEM system • CEM systems used in over 50 countries • Largest provider of computerised adaptive tests outside US

4. The Pupil Premium and Toolkit

5. The pupil premium • Aims: • to reduce the attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving pupils nationally • to increase social mobility • to enable more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to the top Universities • to provide additional resource to schools to do this • £488 last year, £600 this year, £900 next … • Performance of PP pupils reported separately in performance tables • Schools required to say how PP spent & what impact on pupil progress

6. The question How should a school spend any ‘discretionary’ budget to achieve maximum benefits in learning?

7. Before we started • Advice to schools: Up to you to decide… • Initial suggestions: • Smaller classes • One to one tuition • Does spending improve attainment? • Mixed & complex findings from research • The BananaramaPrinciple: It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it… • Do we know some things that do work? • Why have we failed to increase attainment over 30 years?

8. What we tried to do • Summarise the evidence from meta-analysis about the impact of different strategies on learning (attainment). • As found in research studies • These are averages • Apply quality criteria to evaluations: rigorous designs only • Estimate the size of the effect • Standardised Mean Difference = ‘Months of gain’ • Estimate the costs of adopting • Information not always available

9. Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning http://www.suttontrust.com/research/toolkit-of-strategies-to-improve-learning/ Now known as The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit http://www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/

10. In the Toolkit

11. Summaries • What is it?How effective is it?How secure is the • evidence?What are the costs?How applicable is it?Further information

12. Overview of value for money Promising May be worth it 10 Feedback Meta-cognitive Pre-school Peer tutoring 1-1 tutoring Homework Effect Size (months gain) Summer schools ICT Smaller classes Parental involvement AfL Notworth it Individualised learning Sports Learning styles After school Arts Teaching assistants Performance pay 0 Ability grouping £0 £1000 Cost per pupil

13. Top tips for improvement • Think hard about learning • Focus on implementation • Teachers really matter • Invest in good CPD • Evaluate

14. 1. Think hard about learning

15. Key messages • Some things that are popular or widely thought to be effective are probably not worth doing • Ability grouping (setting); After-school clubs; Teaching assistants; Smaller classes; Performance pay • Some things look ‘promising’ • Effective feedback; Meta-­cognitive and self regulation strategies; Peer tutoring/peer‐assisted learning strategies; Homework

16. Does your theory of learning explain why … • Ability grouping (setting) • After-school clubs • Teaching assistants • Smaller classes • Performance pay …do not work (or are not cost effective)? • Feedback • Meta-cognitive strategies • Peer tutoring … are effective?

17. Do we care about learning? • Which of the following are evidence of learning? • Students are busy: lots of work is done • Students are engaged, interested, motivated • Classroom is ordered, calm, under control • What do school students value most? • Social interactions & status with peers • Keeping out of trouble • Pleasing teachers: good marks, neat writing, polite • Thinking hard about really challenging problems

18. A simple theory of learning Learning happens when people have to think hard

19. 2. Focus on implementation

20. Implementation • These strategies have been shown to be cost-effective in research studies • But when we have tried to implement evidence-based strategies we have not seen system-wide improvement • We don’t know how to get schools/teachers who are not currently doing them to do so in ways that are • True to the key principles • Feasible in real classrooms – with all their constraints • Scalable & replicable • Sustainable

21. 3. Teachers really matter

22. What matters most? • What makes most difference to how much a pupil learns • Having a good class teacher? • Having a good headteacher / strong leadership in the school? • Family income? • Family support for learning? • School culture / peer group valuing learning? • Community support for the school?

23. Identifying the best teachers • Individual classroom teachers account for more of the variation in students’ learning gains than any other factor • That includes factors such as expenditure, leadership behaviours, school culture, social disadvantage • Recruitment, support and retention of effective teachers must be key – along with training/development and performance management • But how do we know who the really effective teachers are? • Colleagues observing lessons? • Pupils’ test scores? • Pupils’ ratings? • Parents’ ratings? • Ofsted ratings? • Colleagues (including senior managers) perceptions?

24. How do you make a typical teacher slightly better?

25. 4. Invest in good CPD

26. How do we get students to learn hard things? Eg • Place value • Persuasive writing • Music composition • Balancing chemical equations • Explain what they should do • Demonstrate it • Get them to do it (with gradually reducing support) • Provide feedback • Get them to practice until it is secure

27. How do we get teachers to learn hard things? Eg • Using formativeassessment • Assertive discipline • How to teachalgebra • Explain what they should do

28. What do we know about what makes CPD effective? This slide is intentionally blank

29. What (probably) makes CPD effective? • Intense: at least 15 hours, preferably 50 • Sustained: over at least two terms • Content focus: on teachers’ knowledge of subject content & how students learn it • Active: opportunities to try it out & discuss • Supported: external feedback and networks to improve and sustain • Evidence based: promotes strategies supported by robust evaluation evidence

30. 5. Evaluate

31. Faking ‘school improvement’ (1) • Wait for a bad year and/or choose a bad school to start with. Things can only get better. • Take on any initiative, and ask everyone who put effort into it whether they feel it worked. No-one wants to feel their effort was wasted. • Define ‘improvement’ in terms of perceptions and ratings of teachers. DO NOT conduct any proper assessments – they may disappoint. • Only study schools or teachers that recognise a problem and are prepared to take on an initiative. They’ll probably improve whatever you do.

32. Faking ‘school improvement’ (2) • Conduct some kind of evaluation, but don’t let the design be too good – poor quality evaluations are much more likely to show positive results. • If any improvement occurs in any aspect of performance, focus attention on that rather than on any areas or schools that have not improved or got worse (don’t mention them!). • Put some effort into marketing and presentation of the school. Once you start to recruit better students, things will improve.

33. Bad reasons not to evaluate • We are sure this works • This is so important we need it to work • Everyone is working really hard and fully committed to this • Evaluating would be a lot of work • We don’t have the data to be able to evaluate • We don’t know how to evaluate • We can’t do a really good evaluation, so what is the point of doing it badly? • We do happy sheets and ask people what they thought of it; isn’t that enough? • You can’t do randomised trials in education • What works is different in different schools or contexts

34. Top tips for improvement • Think hard about learning • Focus on implementation • Teachers really matter • Invest in good CPD • Evaluate