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.

While I don't think that the idea behind the OP is meant badly (to provide extra support in schools to children whose parents are not able to support them at home), I think that the criteria the OP chose for deciding which children should be targeted are all wrong.
Helping children with their education has more to do with wanting to do so and having the time to do so than with diplomas, certificates and degrees.

I think that is partly right and partly wrong. Thee are a whole load of people on here for who that is right. But equally there must be thousand or a few million parents, for who that statement is wrong.

My parents had 5 O levels between them, RE and Home Economics were 2 of them. I have a degree, I speak 4 languages, I am currently finalising a book about Francophone cinema. My parents sometimes helped me with my homework and encouraged my learning in every way they could - no qualifications required for that.

Sunshine the pupil premium is extra money given to the school, not to the parents.

Wouldn't it be a good idea to target the support at children who are working at below the expected level nationally?
Or is this too simplistic?

In reality, these children are already targetted for support as one of the key measures for schools is what % of children meet the national expected level and it's part of the headline published data.

But one of the things about pupil premium is that that isn't considered enough any more - schools are meant to show that they are helping pp children make expected progress (and more) from their starting points. The idea being that each child should achieve their full potential, which may be quite a bit more than the "expected" level - I think this is a good development.

Whatever measure you use to gauge disadvantage will only ever be a rather crude measure tbh because anything else would be too expensive for the sums of money involved. So whatever you do there will be someone who fits the official criteria but isn't really disadvantaged and perhaps feels offended by it. There are children I know who qualify for the current pupil premium who probably aren't long term disadvantaged.

Equally there are children I know whose parents work, are on very low incomes and who are disadvantaged (this is in the view of the school, btw, not my own view - I'm a governor and we have been discussing who we might target in addition to those who are "officially" pp)

I actually thought i was the only poster on this site who did not have a Degree or high grade qualifications.....

This site as a whole tends to look down on people with poor qualifications,
certain posters pick people up on small grammar or spelling mistakes.
The general perception of many on this site is that unless you have a Degree

you are a bit thick and undeserving of an opinion. On a thread i started, O.K it was a bit daft, but certain posters could not wait to call me with comments like you "CUT AND PASTE" and that i would not pass a GCSE , to which i replied you are quite right 4Es, 1D and a City & Guilds in Travel & Tourism.
These academic qualifications do not equal my intelligence or knowledge or my interest in education. This is the reason that at 42 i am undertaking an O.U Degree in Social Sciences, neither did my poor academic qualification, stop my Niece from 3As at A level and is now in her 2nd year at an RG University.

There are many reasons as to why many people did not achieve their academic potential 20-30 years ago, i have posted reasons for my failure (Some of it my own Making) on other threads.

Most of the successful and bright people i know may added together have about 5 Gcses, they certainly dont have 1 A level between them. The thought of them getting some sort of pupil premium for their kids is laughable, they are all in the top 1% of earners.

Admittedly academic qualifications are more important now than ever. it could be argued with some reason that many of the successful people i know would not achieve the success they have had today if starting today.
Nonetheless it is simplistic to say intelligence is related to academic success.

I think the biggest problem in some families is intergenerational failure.The fact that some families have nobody from even their grandparents that have achieved anything, be that academic/business or sporting success.

This is far more relevant to future opportunities and success for kids than some arbitrary level of intelligence based on "FIVE GOOD GCSE PASSES".

DC's school (high levels of deprivation) run literacy / numeracy / helping your child with homework / KS2 for beginners classes for parents. Sounds like a brilliant use of resources, but I don't know what the take up's like, or how they work in practice.

I don't think it's a bad idea. You probably have to lower the bar to identify the people who really need help though. As some examples have shown, lack of GCSEs can just be down to not doing well in exams.

For example, if you could identify parents who are functionally illiterate you'd be able to target children who are never going to be read with at home and those who are never going to return forms because their parents can't understand them.

The sort of home support that's valuable to a child progressing at school doesn't have to cost money so parental income isn't necessarily a factor.

Why not provide a complete academic education in schools and stop (as a de facto standard) expecting parents to teach support children educationally at home?

can everyone please read Shoewhores post

She outline the problem exactly.
Because PP is now very tightly ring fenced to FSM, it fails to help other children disadvantaged by very low income or other difficult home circumstances (of which parents having a poor level of education could be one), but there are many others. Having a DM who doesn't speak English and a DF who is British, but hopeless isn't great.

^Family environment is important but different to schooling. What makes it valuable is it's difference. It makes for a more rounded individual. Family life should truly valued, it is not there simply to serve the school's agenda, it provides a different but equally valid dimension to an individual's socialisation.

Therefore it is not up to educationalists to dictate how family life should operate.

Princess Diana left school with entirely zero O levels. And she was a single mum. Using your criteria, Wills and Harry should get it (if they were still school age).

capsium. But that is not how life works. Pupils always do better educationally with extras that parents provide - whatever the level of education taught. Extras not just some clubs and activities, but extras as regards time spent on them.

Yabvvvvu, very broad sweeping statements, with no hard evidence to support your claims

I think that the op meant both parents combined who dont have 5 GCSEs between them?

Actually the ops last paragraph of her opening statement is as valid, probably more valid than the rest of her op.

Why not provide a complete academic education in schools and stop (as a de facto standard) expecting parents to teach support children educationally at home?

The problem is, it's not just the obvious teaching ("Miss Smith didn't show you how to multiply, let me help") that advantages the children. Unless you're planning to ban parents from owning books, going to the theatre or answering questions using their own knowledge, children in households with a high level of formal education will arrive at (to cite one of the classic places where accusations of prejudice get thrown around) an Oxford interview with a massively different, and for the purpose at hand more useful, set of experiences.

The pupil premium, the work of the Sutton Trust, "The Challenge": these are all attempts to provide for people from more deprived backgrounds the casual tutorial atmosphere that exists in the houses of a certain subject of the educated middle-classes, a subset that massively, massively dominates admission to selective universities and then the professions. The implementation may be patchy, but the intent is good.

Guiltismymaster - off topic, but that's exciting about your book in Francophone cinema! I'm just coming to the end of my PhD on a contemporary French filmmaker. Nice to meet a fellow enthusiast.

And to go back to the original point, even with this PhD I still couldn't help a child with many subjects (namely maths and sciences). Whereas my BIL, who dropped out of university, would be able to do so no problem and is among the top 10% of earners where I live. It's all about convergence of circumstances - the life you're born into, what you choose to do with it and the people/situations you come into contact with.

bettyswollocks both my parents have degtrees. My siblings do too.
Sio i guess that shows that the chilsren if educated people can slip through the net too

Gold It is a stereotype and an ill informed one at that. My parents did not have any O-Levels. I have a degree, my brother a degree and an MSC.

Sometimes a perceived disadvantage can spur a person on to achieve. Education is not the only route to achievement. Parental support is not either, thank God, because otherwise there would be a lot of people who were doomed...

'Extra support' in terms of state education is linked with funding. It is a corrupt system. There is too much incentive towards labelling children as disadvantaged. The funding does not always reach those it should.

www.mumsnet.com/Talk/primary/1862438-Teachers-do-not-adhere-to-Statemented-1-to-1-support-do-not-believe-in-sub-levels-make-APP-assessments-up-How-much-of-what-parents-are-told-by-schools-about-teaching-is-a-box-ticking-exercise

The above thread is a real eye opener.

Its an ok idea in theory. But with DD1 she was brought up in a house with no GCSEs between the pair of us. Did that mean we were uneducated and unable to help with her homework? no it didn't, it meant that we didn't take advantage of our education at school - I now have a PhD (and no job!) and DP still doesn't have a GCSE but is a qualified carpenter with his own business that does pretty well. He is an amazingly clever man, but not particularly academic.

I am not sure how a Pupil premium would help - You can do perfectly well in life without a degree or a set of GCSEs, ok, for most people, these things are a requirement but not everyone. How would giving the school more money help?

There are people who DO struggle with all things homework through no fault of their own, i think it is important that homework is set so that actually it doesn't really matter how much your parents can support you. We are encouraged to allow children to complete homework on their own - i do help DD but she struggles, many of the other parents i know just let them get on with it - and i am talking highly educated parents before you jump on that.

Homework needs to be a level playing field, just as education is - however, this will probably never be, sadly.

I've got a degree but should my niece and nephew ask me to help them with their homework they'd be screwed Just because an adult has 5 GCSEs or higher doesn't mean they understand everything a child is taught in school these days or that they can provide homework assistance to a level that other parents can't.

I think it's quite rude to assume that just because someone didn't get a certain number of GCSEs (which can be for any reason) it means they aren't able or knowledgable enough to help their children with their schoolwork.

You can do perfectly well in life without a degree or a set of GCSEs

You can smoke 20 a day for all your life and life to be ninety, but the chances are distinctly reduced. That is about the level of anecdote.