1 The Pupil Premium How 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: o to reduce the attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving pupils nationally o to increase social mobility o to enable more pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to get to the top Universities o 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  Advice to schools: Up to you to decide…  Initial suggestions: o Smaller classes o One to one tuition  Does spending improve attainment? o Mixed & complex findings from research o The Bananarama Principle: 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? Before we started

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

9 Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning olkit-of-strategies-to-improve-learning/ Now known as The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning 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 Cost per pupil Effect Size (months gain) £ £1000 Feedback Meta-cognitive Peer tutoring Pre-school 1-1 tutoring Homework ICT AfL Parental involvement Sports Summer schools After school Individualised learning Learning styles Arts Performance pay Teaching assistants Smaller classes Ability grouping Promising May be worth it Not worth it

13 1.Think hard about learning 2.Focus on implementation 3.Teachers really matter 4.Invest in good CPD 5.Evaluate Top tips for improvement

14 1. Think hard about learning

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

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? o Students are busy: lots of work is done o Students are engaged, interested, motivated o Classroom is ordered, calm, under control  What do school students value most? o Social interactions & status with peers o Keeping out of trouble o Pleasing teachers: good marks, neat writing, polite o Thinking hard about really challenging problems

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

19 2. Focus on implementation

20  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 o True to the key principles o Feasible in real classrooms – with all their constraints o Scalable & replicable o Sustainable Implementation

21 3. Teachers really matter

22  What makes most difference to how much a pupil learns 1.Having a good class teacher? 2.Having a good headteacher / strong leadership in the school? 3.Family income? 4.Family support for learning? 5.School culture / peer group valuing learning? 6.Community support for the school? What matters most?

23  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? o Colleagues observing lessons? o Pupils’ test scores? o Pupils’ ratings? o Parents’ ratings? o Ofsted ratings? o Colleagues (including senior managers) perceptions? Identifying the best teachers

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 formative assessment  Assertive discipline  How to teach algebra Explain what they should do

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

29  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 What (probably) makes CPD effective?

30 5. Evaluate

31  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. Faking ‘school improvement’ (1)

32  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. Faking ‘school improvement’ (2)

33  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 Bad reasons not to evaluate

34 1.Think hard about learning 2.Focus on implementation 3.Teachers really matter 4.Invest in good CPD 5.Evaluate Top tips for improvement