To think that a pupil premium should be paid for children who live in home where none of the parents have qualifications

[ReallyTired]

I think that the education of the parents has a more significant outcome on a child's attainment than income. (Especially as many working poor don't have much more money than those on benefits.)

I feel that children who live in households where no adult has five GCSEs or equivalent should get extra support at school. Often these families aren't entitled to benefits because the parents do work so currently don't get the pupil premium.

It is harder for uneducated parents to support their children with homework than someone with a degree. Better eduated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate. For example making sure that statemented child gets what they are legally entitled to. (Getting a child assesed by an ed pych so that the child's dyslexia is spotted.)

Unskilled people often do physically hard work for very long hours for very little money. I believe that a child with unskilled working parents is at a major disadvantage as their parents are time poor as well as cash poor.

Of course you would not prevent parents working with their children. Schools should not dictate this, however.

What does that mean? Are you seriously suggesting that there are serried ranks of educated Mumsnet reading parents, agonising over educational outcomes and watching every detail of the reading scheme, who would if told simply sigh, put it all aside, and leave their children to raised by wolves educated purely by the school? Seriously?

The main effect of telling people to back off with the home support, or not encouraging it quite so vocally, would be that people who don't do it still wouldn't do it, a marginal group who do it grudgingly would stop doing it, and the middle classes would continue with their obsessive interest in education just as today. Widening gaps. How is that a good thing?

How do you know the interventions actually help if this cannot be tested?

Because schools in receipt of pupil premium are measured on their "Closing the Gap" statistics, as you'll know from looking at the Data Dashboard of schools you're associated with.

Help as and when needed, to the best of your abilities is all that should be asked.

It's not a matter of what's asked of parents. It's a matter of what parents will do anyway. You cannot possibly reduce the amount of support that engaged parents offer their parents, as they'll do it no matter what you attempt to convince them to do. Middle-class parents are simply not going to say "I know, I won't read with Tarquin today, because doing so increases relative disadvantage". The only way to address this sort of disadvantage is to attempt to support those who are disadvantaged.

Depends on your views regarding the success of interventions friday.

What does that even mean? That the interventions are harming children and they would be better off without them? Right.

Yes it's generational and yes we should identify and help those DCs, But I will replete what others have said, FSM is a crude way of identifying them.

In this sort of rural area, the children of, just make ends meet, unskilled workers are just as likely to be turned of education as their parents before them.

In fact as they become more and more out numbered by degree educated, well off commuters, the situation gets worse.

Our house prices and rents are ridiculous, many poorer families can't find affordable housing and are forced to move. I lost a very DF this way.

Those who remain find themselves in schools geared up to send little Tarquin to Oxbridge like his mum, not help a child who's parents have never heard of a UMAs point achieve their full potential.

But I will repeat what others have said, FSM is a crude way of identifying them.

Suggest something better. It's accepted as a blunt instrument in the policy documents.

2. But isn’t FSM an inaccurate measure of disadvantage?

FSM is the only pupil level measure of deprivation available. The link between FSM eligibility and underachievement is very strong and data on FSM is easily collected and updated annually. The FSM indicator best fits the rationale for the Premium. From 2012-13 the reach of the Pupil Premium was extended to those who have previously been eligible for FSM at any point in the last six years.

Those who remain find themselves in schools geared up to send little Tarquin to Oxbridge like his mum, not help a child who's parents have never heard of a UMAs point achieve their full potential.

So what would you prefer? Two tiers of schools, one targeting university, the other targeting whatever low aspirations you think more suitable for the hewers of wood and drawers of water? Tarquin's mother would like that, certainly. Shouldn't all of them be aspiring to Oxbridge, or don't you think the working classes are capable of it?

I was sexually assaulted ten days before I took my GSCEs. Failed most of them. Don't put people in boxes when you don't know their circumstances. If you don't have letters after your name it doesn't make you stupid. I've met people with every credential on paper yet they can't load a washing machine and switch it on.

Better eduated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate

I think you are talking crap! I am not brilliantly educated (hated school, no parental help with studying, very low GCSE grades etc) and I meet my children's quite perfectly & get them what they need at school. In fact, I was 'educated' enough to know that my daughter's school was letting her (an the rest of her class) down academically & so moved her. And I realised this long before more 'educated' parents within the school. In fact a very highly educated parents insists there is nothing wrong with he school.

I should say that I went to do very well in my chosen career (that I needed no qualifications for at the time), gaining 7 letters after my name. I hated school, but now I love learning & as a result am plenty able to help my daughter's with their homework. What I can't help with (hasn't happened yet), we will find out (library etc)

It isn't about education, it is about wanting the best for your children.

I've met people with every credential on paper yet they can't load a washing machine and switch it on

Agree!

Not to mention the ones who have absolutely no social skills or manners at all.

No!
What I do think is schools with a large number of articulate lists parents, get their attention diverted away from DCs who need more support and careers guidance.

Also if you have a large number of FSM, PP eligible DCs there will tend to be spare money at the margins to help other disadvantaged DCs.

This is not the case if you have only a few. Their PP might subsides the odd trip, but it won't fund a TA or buy a class set of iPods.

I can only scape 4 GCSE equivalents, I was in the polite scheme in the 80's so I have 2 Certs for each exam, I got 2 grade c's at 'o' level and 2 grade 1's at CSE, unfortunately the same 2 subjects :)
I failed my 11 plus, my parents both left school without qualifications, Dad at 14, he always felt lucky he was the year before the school leaving age increased to 15.

One lunch time at work discussing our children, and a the kent test, I was amazed to find I was one of only 2 of us who didn't have a degree, and the only one who didn't have a degree, there where 6 of us...anyway I had to call a halt to the discussion as I needed to get my staff back to work...

Polite love it! Pilot, bloody phone :)

Christ any more mistakes! This One mine 'A' levels instead of the second degree

I rather think none of you have wondered what support parents can offer children if they are illiterate themselves. I think the OP set the bar too high with 5 GCSEs but schools in areas of lower achieving parents, do find that the children receive less support at home. Not always because parents do not care but because they are unable to help. The parents may have low IQs, have barely attended school themselve, lead chaotic lifestyles etc.
However I have no idea how this can be connected to pupil premium because the information about parents is sensitive and quite often a school may only find out that a parent is unable to help because the parent never writes in the reading log or says at parents evening that their child reads better than they do! You could not possibly ask for their qualifications. For years it has been recognised that attaching money to f s m is simple and a bit crude, but it is not wholly unreliable.

There is a lot of scholarly research on this subject which backs up the OPs opinion that children of better educated parents (especially mothers) do better in school.

When studying this subject, researchers have to separate the effects of parental education and parental income. They also must consider whether inherited intelligence might be a factor in determining educational outcomes (do clever parents get better results and then have clever kids who do better just because of their genes?). The subject is complex, but as far as I can tell the results are quite clear.

Here is a quote from:
PMCID: PMC2853053
NIHMSID: NIHMS140890
Long-term Effects of Parents’ Education on Children’s Educational and Occupational Success
Eric F. Dubow, Paul Boxer, and L. Rowell Huesmann

"In an analysis of data from several large-scale developmental studies, Duncan and Brooks-Gunn (1997) concluded that maternal education was linked significantly to children’s intellectual outcomes even after controlling for a variety of other SES indicators such as household income."

I tried to copy and paste a graph which showed the strong correlation between maternal GCSE results and a child's educational outcome (controlled for income), but I couldn't.

I agree that the OP sounds condescending, but everyone's anecdotes just show that there are lots of exceptions to any rule.

I can tell you right now who loses from the PP. The middle classes. Good.

That's such a nasty attitude!

As has been pointed out many times on this site in various threads, income is not a measure of intelligence, and obviously children from poorer families deserve as much academic opportunity as everyone else. But does that mean that the middle class but relatively unintelligent children don't deserve any extra help despite the fact that they need it?

It's as if you're saying that the educational achievement of any child who has parents that have a decent income doesn't matter and they shouldn't be provided with state funded help they need. And that's just wrong!

Having an income over that which entitles a family to FSMs does not guarantee engaged parents that support children's learning.

Schools don't actually need a list of who's parents are low income to see who needs extra help at schools. They can tell quite easily who gets support at home and who doesn't, and they can tell who is naturally quite intelligent and who isn't.

People doing the educating should be able to decide where to direct any extra resources based on what the children they have contact with actually need. It's not good enough in my opinion to say that FSMs are a blunt instrument and we know that so that makes it ok. It isn't ok. Every child deserves to have their needs met, even if they don't come from a poor family or have sen.

My DHs dad was a plasterer, left school with no exams back in rural Ireland. His Mum was a childminder, no exams (you didn't need them to be a childminder in those days) and never reads a single book. DH has a Masters and PhD. So I think you are wrong.

I might add that many of our relations who are less formally educated than DH are earning much much more.

"But does that mean that the middle class but relatively unintelligent children don't deserve any extra help despite the fact that they need it?" It's not about being intelligent or not being intelligent. It's about the barriers to accessing education. The middle class but less intelligent child still has huge advantages compared to even a very bright child from a disadvantaged background. And, as I said earlier, all the anecdotes in he world doesn't change that. Of course there are children from very challenging backgrounds who do incredibly well. And they are likely to be disproportionately represented in places like mumsnet- because they are literate, articulate and have access to social media. The vast majority who do not overcome such difficult starts are by definition, not present.

It is harder for uneducated parents to support their children with homework than someone with a degree.

The child should not need support to do their homework if the teacher had taught the subject well, making sure everyone in the class understands the concept then the pupil should be able to do the homework, which I was always told was to practice what had been already taught that day.
Ds brought home his homework one day. Make a viking longboat from the tenplate on the piece of paper. It took me 3 hours of folding and matching up ends with ends and then sticking it all together. I would seriously like to know how this was homework given all the parents had to do it for their 6 year olds. Is this why you think parents should have 5 GCSE's as the homework set is for the parents to do not the children.

Educated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate. For example making sure that statemented child gets what they are legally entitled to. (Getting a child assesed by an ed pych so that the child's dyslexia is spotted.)

Most "educated mothers" are never there. They are usually working a 60-70 hour week in the city. They never come to the school and are home too late for homework. Shouldn't you target these comments at the nannies who spend more time with the children than the parents.
Not too sure what it is like for other parts of the country but in and around London if you work full time it usually means being on the 7am train and arriving back at the station at 7pm.

But it's still essentially saying that one child's barrier to a good educational outcome is more important than another's, and I can't agree that's right.

I'm not saying that children who are disadvantaged because of a low income shouldn't get extra help, they should. But so should any other child that needs it.

They are children, and they should be given help despite what their parents do or don't do.

A school wouldn't have the right to congratulate itself on its success if it managed to get its low income children good SATs results when at the same time as others didn't do as well as they could have done if they had been given extra help too.

"Unskilled people often do physically hard work for very long hours for very little money. I believe that a child with unskilled working parents is at a major disadvantage as their parents are time poor as well as cash poor"

• your inference being that those with higher education qualifications don't work long hours and 'skilled' working parents have more time to help homework? There's a whole research paper in that statement itself!

Of course YABU - too many generalisations and assumptions, a totally unworkable idea and completely unfair.

As has been pointed out many times on this site in various threads, income is not a measure of intelligence

It is, and vice versa. It's not a perfect measure, but if there's one thing that groups of people discussing political issues are bad at, it's dealing with coefficients of correlation that are neither zero nor one. Pick any measure of income you like. Pick any measure you like of educational outcome (as a proxy for whatever you want to define intelligence as). They're strongly correlated. It doesn't matter if you think that's nature or nurture, because the intergenerational effect means they go hand in hand. It's not a guarantee, and there will always be regression to the mean, but it is ludicrous to imply that, as a tendency, people who succeeded in education don't earn more than those that didn't, that people in high earning jobs are more likely to have succeeded in education, and that success in education is more likely to be associated with intelligence. You can drag out endless anecdotes to attack that: I refer you to my comment about people's ability to reason about coefficients of correlation that are neither zero nor one.

And what's more relevant here is educational outcome versus parental income. The US SAT is a good data set to look at, because it's taken by a lot of people, and the SAT Reasoning test (Critical Reading, Writing, Math) is taken (the same paper) by all candidates This graph is shocking.

It's as if you're saying that the educational achievement of any child who has parents that have a decent income doesn't matter and they shouldn't be provided with state funded help they need.

I am not saying that. I am saying that for a given level of innate ability (whatever that means) it is easier for a middle-class child to succeed than a child from a less privileged background. Same ability. Better outcomes. Everything from more help with reading at home to more money to go on University open days to more help finding work experience to more money to do DofE to piano lessons to having decent shoes to go to school in to having better advice on choosing GCSE options to more willingness to fund out of school activities to more access to their dad's mate who's a professor to...

If the children are struggling educationally with special needs, there is a parallel system of funding which is nothing to do with PP. Although, in passing, it's hardly I think contentious to point out that middle-class parents are also better at navigating the statementing system, more likely to be effective advocates and more likely to be able to afford the legal fees for an appeal to a tribunal. And I've seen the claim made that the middle classes are more likely to recognise problems in their children, seek out, and then obtain, statements, because they have a lower concern about being adjudged bad parents.

But PP isn't about that. It's about the observation that for a given level of ability, children from privileged backgrounds do better. If that's not true, why is Oxford 45.7% privately educated, while the University of Wolverhampton is 1.2% privately educated? PP is about trying to alter that.

*It is harder for uneducated parents to support their children with homework than someone with a degree. Better eduated mothers are better at getting their children's needs met as they are often more articulate. For example making sure that statemented child gets what they are legally entitled to. (Getting a child assesed by an ed pych so that the child's dyslexia is spotted.)

Unskilled people often do physically hard work for very long hours for very little money. I believe that a child with unskilled working parents is at a major disadvantage as their parents are time poor as well as cash poor.*

YABVU to make this sweeping generalisation.

Bold fail!

"The child should not need support to do their homework if the teacher had taught the subject well, making sure everyone in the class understands the concept then the pupil should be able to do the homework, which I was always told was to practice what had been already taught that day."

Firstly, suppose they don't understand? Planning for a world in which all teaching is perfect seems unwise.

And are you implying that there is no benefit to a child in going above, beyond, around, alongside the material? That a conversation over dinner about the Treaty of Versailles is of no benefit to a child taking a GCSE module about the effects of the First World War, even if the teaching has been perfect?

Most "educated mothers" are never there. They are usually working a 60-70 hour week in the city.

There is a world outside London, you know.

I have an idea.... its a bit unconventional, but I think some people will agree It could work

I think instead of giving free school meals to everyone despite income
I think instead of giving winter payments to rich old folks
I think instead of my taxes paying for an 11% pay rise for MPs plus paying for hotels for conservative MPS who have a FIRST home in London
I think instead of paying gas and electric bills on second homes for MPs
I think instead of subsidising their alcohol intake and food

I think that smaller class sizes, more teachers and more resources will have THE most profound effect on education

I think that introducing private business into education is a foul concept and one That will never benefit the children.
I think that pissing around changing schools into acadamies and making education run on a business level and economies of scale is missing the fucking point

I think if they collected the taxes fromt heir rich chums in large corporations, these things could happen easily