#unseenchildren Unseen Children: Access and Achievement in Education Sean Harford HMI Regional Director Ofsted

#unseenchildren Aims  Explain about the Access & Achievement review  Set out the key issues  Review findings  Link with use of Pupil Premium

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement - history  First report in 1993 ‘Access and achievement in urban education’ – Stuart Sutherland  Theme returned to by David Bell in a lecture in 2003  Sir Michael Wilshaw revisited the idea this year, 20 years on

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – quality of schools

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – outcomes in the Early Years

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – outcomes in Primary education

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – outcomes in Secondary education

#unseenchildren Location of the 97 secondary schools in England serving above average proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, with the highest performance at GCSE for these pupils Sample based on the 97 schools with above average proportions of eligible free school meals pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 (national average = 14%) and where their eligible free school meals pupils attained above the national average for all pupils at GCSE (59%) in 2012.

#unseenchildren Location of the 111 secondary schools in England serving above average proportions of pupils eligible for free school meals, with the lowest performance at GCSE for these pupils Sample based on the 111 schools with above average proportions of eligible free school meals pupils at the end of Key Stage 4 (national average = 14%) and where fewer than 20% of their eligible free school meals pupils attained the GCSE benchmark in 2012.

#unseenchildren FSM pupils in the East of England

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – outcomes post 16

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement 2013 – report findings and recommendations

#unseenchildren Access & Achievement - summary main findings  Widening variety in regional performance – worst where poorest are spread thinly – West Berkshire (KS2, KS4 and at age 19)  Long tail of underperformance mainly affecting the poorest (and most often White British – two thirds) children – isolated and coastal towns  More optimism than in 1993 and 2003  The rising tide test: more boats are being lifted!  Political will and focus, good organisation and professional leadership can lead to improvement for the most deprived  Disadvantage and poor achievement NOT necessarily tied to urban deprivation/inner city blight – e.g. London, parts of Manchester  Poverty of expectation vs material poverty

#unseenchildren Recommendation 1: Ofsted will be tougher in future with schools which are letting down their poor children. Schools previously judged outstanding, which are not doing well by their poorest children, will be re-inspected.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 2: The development and roll-out of sub-regional challenges aimed particularly at raising the achievement of disadvantaged children.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 3: A more strategic approach is taken to the appointment of National Leaders of Education and their matching with schools in need of support.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 4: The government must do more to ensure that teachers on funded schemes are directed to underperforming schools in less fashionable or more remote or challenging places. The concept of a ‘National Service Teacher’ should be an urgent consideration for government.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 5: The Government should review assessment in Reception and Key Stage 1, with a view to publishing progress measures from the start of school to the end of Key Stage 1.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 6: The government should be more prepared to dismantle inadequate colleges that have grown too large to assure quality across their different activities. Smaller specialist units, including University Technology Colleges, should be created with stronger links to business, commerce and industry.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 7: The recommendations in the Richard Review should be implemented in full. This will provide a sound basis on which to reform and grow this system.

#unseenchildren Recommendation 8: All post-16 providers should report on the rate of progress and outcomes for all young people who had previously been eligible for free school meals.

#unseenchildren Characteristics of successful approaches  Ring fenced the funding so that they always spent it on the target group  Never confused eligibility for the Pupil Premium with low ability, and focused on supporting disadvantaged pupils to achieve the highest levels  Thoroughly analysed which pupils were underachieving and why  Drew on research evidence and their own and others’ experience to allocate the funding to the activities that were most likely to have an impact on achievement  Understood the importance of ensuring that all day-to-day teaching meets the needs of each learner, rather than relying on interventions to compensate for teaching that is less than good  Used achievement data frequently (not retrospectively) to check whether interventions or techniques were working and made adjustments accordingly

#unseenchildren Characteristics of successful approaches  Made sure that support staff (particularly TAs) were highly trained and understood their role in helping pupils to achieve  Ensured that a designated senior leader had a clear overview of how the funding was being allocated and the difference it was making to the outcomes for pupils  Ensured that teachers knew which pupils were eligible for the Pupil Premium so that they could take responsibility for accelerating their progress  Included discussions about pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium in performance management meetings  Thoroughly involved governors in the decision making and evaluation process  Were able, through careful monitoring and evaluation, to demonstrate the impact of each aspect of their spending on the outcomes for pupils.

#unseenchildren Characteristics of successful approaches  Had a lack of clarity about the intended impact of the spending  Spent the funding indiscriminately on teaching assistants, with little impact  Did not monitor the quality and impact of interventions well enough  Did not have a good performance management system for support staff  Did not have a clear audit trail for where the funding had been spent  Focused on pupils attaining the nationally expected level at the end of the key stage, but did not to go beyond these expectations, so some more able eligible pupils underachieved

#unseenchildren And finally a quote… “The greater the number of people who prove to be educable beyond all previous expectations... the stronger the suspicion grows that the rest may have been underestimated also, and that we are somehow failing a substantial number of young people.” Ministry of Education (1963) Half our Future’

#unseenchildren Questions?