1. Spending the Pupil Premium: Strategies to Improve Learning
Steve Higgins
School of Education, Durham University
Signposts for Success – Effective Intervention for Children Looked After
17th October 2012
Hertfordshire Development Centre, Stevenage

2. Sutton Trust Report on Spending the Pupil Premium: Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning
Why we wrote it
Best ‘buys’
Worst ‘buys’
Learning
How might we use it?

3. 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
to support looked after children
£600 in for fsm1 pupils; rising to £900 in and £1200 in ?
1 any child registered for fsm in the last six years and all looked after children

4. Resources and learning
Above a minimum threshold – no simple link
More money ≠ more learning
There is an association but weak and complex
Conclusion: spending more won’t guarantee benefit- no simple solution

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

6. The Bananarama Principle
It ain’t what you do it’s the way that you do it…
So how do you spend £600/pupil to “get results”?
Or, what does the evidence say is a good investment or a poor investment for learning?
It ain’t what you spend but the way that you spend it…
Resources and learning

7. Smaller classes?
Complex evidence- no clear link with class size and achievement
Experimental trials suggest
Classes need to be less than about 17
And teachers need to change the way they teach
But teaching assistants not as effective
The maths:
£600 x 20 pupils x 3 classes = £27,000
50%+ on fsm = 1 extra teacher per 3 classes
Class size reduction from 30 to 23 – not enough

8. One-to-one tuition Highly effective The maths…
I hour/ day over at least 6 weeks
Support for class teacher to re-integrate
The maths…
6 weeks x 5 days x 1 hour = 30 hours
4 days teacher time (more effective with an experienced teacher)
Approx £800
May work if you use pairs and target pupils only need it once a year – expensive but effective

9. 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

10. Best ‘buys’...
Toolkit

11. Toolkit

12. Worst ‘buys’...
Toolkit

13. What is it? How effective is it? How secure is the
Summaries
What is it? How effective is it? How secure is the
evidence? What do I need to know?

14. Toolkit

15. Overview of value for money
Promising
May be worth it 10
Feedback
Meta-cognition
Peer tutoring
EY intervention
1-1 tutoring
Homework
Effect Size (months gain)
Summer schools
ICT
Phonics
Smaller classes
Parental involvement
Individualised learning
Sports
After school
Not worth it
Learning styles
Arts
Performance pay
Teaching assistants
Ability grouping £0
£1000
Cost per pupil

16. Issues and limitations
Based on meta-analysis – averages of averages
Conversion to ‘months progress’ is a rough estimate
Intervention research is compared with ‘normal’ practice which is varied
Not ‘what works’ but what has worked – ‘good bets’ to support professional evaluation and enquiry

17. 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-cognition and self regulation strategies; Peer tutoring; Homework (for secondary pupils)

18. Feedback
“… we have each been asked several times by teachers, ‘What makes for good feedback?’—a question to which, at first, we had no good answer. Over the course of two or three years, we have evolved a simple answer—good feedback causes thinking.”
(Black & Wiliam, 2003)
Black, P., & Wiliam, D. (2003). 'In praise of educational research': Formative assessment. British Educational Research Journal, 29(5),

19. Meta-cognition and self regulation strategies
Teaching approaches which make learners’ thinking about learning more explicit in the classroom.
E.g. teaching pupils strategies to plan, to monitor and to evaluate their own learning.
It is usually more effective in small groups so learners can support each other and make their thinking explicit through discussion.
Self-regulation refers to managing one’s own motivation towards learning AND managing one’s thinking and reasoning (cognitive aspects).

20. Peer tutoring
Learners work in pairs or small groups to provide each other with explicit teaching support. The learners take on responsibility for aspects of teaching and for evaluating the success of their peers.
Cross-Age Tutoring an older learner usually takes the tutoring role and is paired with a younger tutee or tutees.
Peer-Assisted Learning Strategies (PALS) is a structured approach for mathematics and reading requiring set periods of time for implementation of about minutes 2 or 3 times a week.
Reciprocal Peer Tutoring: learners alternate between the role of tutor and tutee.

21. Effective strategies Effective feedback (needs trust)
Build learning relationships
Support social interaction and support
One-to-one tuition – with an experienced teacher
Small group collaborative learning

22. Have we solved the problem of how to improve attainment?
Is that it?
Have we solved the problem of how to improve attainment?

23. The challenges (1): 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 (e.g. AfL)
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 and replicable
Sustainable

24. The challenges (2) : making it work for you
This is what has worked (on average)
Where is there leverage for improvement in your work?
Will it build capacity?
For learners?
For teachers?
How will this apply to children looked after?

25. Research example: Letterbox club
Once‐monthly personalised parcels posted to children in their foster homes
Reading materials, story CDs, stationery and mathematics games
7‐ 11 years, May to October
Aims to improve attainment levels in reading and number skills
Booktrust, Leicester Uni, DfE
Winter K., Connolly P., Bell, I. and Ferguson, J. (2011) An Evaluation of the Effectiveness of the Letterbox Club in Improving Educational Outcomes among Children Aged 7‐11 Years in Foster Care in Northern Ireland, Belfast: Centre for Effective Education, Queen’s University Belfast.

26. How will the Toolkit develop?
Next update planned for January – a more dynamic resource with evidence of effective practice based on rigorous evaluation
It will grow as the evidence base does; EEF projects will help fill-in the gaps and expand the scope
The EEF will also create practical examples of the interventions backed up by evidence – e.g. training, programmes and approaches that schools can use
Toolkit will become broader (e.g. more topics) and deeper (e.g. more detail within topics).

27. Links
The full report can be found on the EEF’s website: With information about the background to the analysis: The toolkit is recommended by the Department for Education: Official information about the Pupil Premium and LA allocations is available at: Ofsted’s report is available at:

28. High Impact Low cost High cost Low Impact Questions:
Where do different strategies lie? (Remember, you are thinking about averages not maximums)
Why do the strategies lie there? (“I remember reading that teaching assistants don’t make a difference” is not a good answer!)
How could we move strategies north-west? (This is really the key question – teachers aren’t passive recipients of research – they should think about how they can ensure that within a distribution of impacts, they are in the most positive half, and they should be thinking about how to make effective strategies more cost effective e.g. 2-1 tuition)
Low Impact

29. Key points What will you do? BUT what will you stop doing?
How will you connect this to learning? How will you connect this to attainment?
BUT what will you stop doing?

30. For every complex problem there is a solution that is simple, neat…
and WRONG!
H.L. Mencken