DfE finds that higher parental incomes buy better educational outcomes

[noblegiraffe]

In a piece of research that will surprise no one, it turns out that children of wealthier parents do better at school.

However, while it is obvious that PP students and especially FSM pupils perform particularly badly, pupils from below-median-income families perform lower than, but more in line with children from wealthier families than with PP pupils.

What the DfE really want to know in this consultation, however, is whether they should refer to below-median-income families who don't qualify for PP as 'Ordinary Working Families'.

consult.education.gov.uk/school-leadership-analysis-unit/analysing-family-circumstances-and-education-1/

Good to know that they are spending their time and effort focusing on the key issues in education at the moment.

I've read the latter part of this thread with interest.
DH & I are well educated and well off, but my DDs are adopted so qualify for PP+.

Occasionally we have been offered subsidised for them, but we have always turned down a subsidy and paid in full, because we can.

However we have been very grateful for the funding which has helped provide emotional support and 1-1 interventions. This is something which really we can't buy outside of school, since having pastoral access as needed, or 1-1 interventions in a seamless way isn't possible out of school.

Our secondary has very good 'closing the gap' figures and so I believe it spends its PP money wisely.

Since I began training 5 years ago I have asked "what should I be doing for FSM and PP children?" with alarming frequency. And I have never had a satisfactory response. Fortunately, some good research has been done, but is will take a decade (or more) for the approaches to be adopted by a significant majority of schools over the educational lifetime of a child.

Amelia, this is why I am against blanket approaches. It takes so long, more than nearly the whole of a child's time at primary or secondary just to work out whether an approach is successful.

This is why I believe it is of utmost importance to look at each individual child's needs firstly and foremost, without predjudice.

Occasionally we have been offered subsidised for them, but we have always turned down a subsidy and paid in full, because we can.

However we have been very grateful for the funding which has helped provide emotional support and 1-1 interventions. This is something which really we can't buy outside of school, since having pastoral access as needed, or 1-1 interventions in a seamless way isn't possible out of school.

Tween, it sounds like your DD's have been able to access a much more personalised package of support, with opportunity for you to have a choice over this and have an input, than what would appear to have been made available across the board at all schools.

clarity I do believe both the primary and secondary my DDs attended / still attend have used their PP money in a well focussed way. I have read the reports on how the funding is spent at both schools (has to be published I believe) and they seem to use it on a variety of schemes targeted at differing needs.

So I don't think their support has been more individual than received by others at the same school, but yes I can well believe our school is spending it better than many others. As I said, their 'closing the gap' figures are very good.

Though, I must say, Tween, some of the money could have been spent needlessly on your DD's, if you had been less scrupulous and taken up the offers of subsidised enrichment activities, which you could could afford to pay for yourselves.

This still makes me question why on earth we need PP rather than simply directing the money towards additional needs funding, to be assessed and used, as needed, on a case by case basis.

Because assessing need and then allocating funding appropriately is expensive. This is why they don't means-test bus passes for pensioners - it would wipe out any savings made.

why on earth we need PP

The graph in the OP is the obvious answer to this.

The thing with additional needs funding is you kind of have to prove the needs to get the funding.

Whereas with PP/PPP kids, the needs are clearly there because as a group they underachieve, even if the needs are less visible.

By providing the funding, the state has enabled schools to have a go at addressing those needs, and now the more successful schools are sharing their good practice to others.

The graph in the OP is the obvious answer to this.

The research you quoted though OP shows the biggest correlation is between in receipt of PP and low educational achievement not family income since those narrowly missing qualifying for PP did much better than those qualifying!

Because assessing need and then allocating funding appropriately is expensive. This is why they don't means-test bus passes for pensioners - it would wipe out any

Doesn't the above suggest that, as being in receipt of PP seems to be positively detrimental to a child's educational achievement, money has been significantly wasted already?

The thing with additional needs funding is you kind of have to prove the needs to get the funding.

This is a positive! You need an adequate assessment of needs in order to best tailor an approach to meet them.

between in receipt of PP and low educational achievement

This shows that the criteria for receiving PP has successfully highlighted a group of students who underachieve.

NOT as you keep weirdly insisting, that allocating extra funding to a group of students makes them do worse at school.

And with SEN schools first take funds (up to 6k per child per year) from their own budget to fund SEN intervention before applying for an ECHP and high needs funding. So they can allocate resource to need pretty quickly (as long as they have put enough of their budget aside for SEN). Because they have to do this before high needs funding is applied for, it prevents a child's individual funding being spent elsewhere on other children (which distorts need and inhibits transparency). However if PP is used to fund SEN intervention this could encourage schools to put less aside for SENs and promote a mindset which conflates SEN with PP qualifying factors.

NOT as you keep weirdly insisting, that allocating extra funding to a group of students makes them do worse at school.

I know it is shocking. However my child appeared to do worse when in receipt of individual funding allocated through a Statement. Until the Statement ceased and then amazingly there was appeared to be a 'leap' in attainment! Go figure...

clarity, the research absolutely does not say that being in receipt of PP is, in itself, detrimental. It takes some serious mental gymnastics to leap to that conclusion.

Pupils in particular groups (very low income, in care, parent in forces) do demonstrably worse than others. These are the students whom PP is targeted at. From what I understand, the very reason these students have been focused on is that they were doing demonstrably worse than their peers before PP was introduced. What we really need to look at are areas where PP money has been used effectively (some research has been done, hopefully more in en route) to see how to replicate that in schools across the country.

What I would also like to see in the current climate is a comparison of grammar areas vs non grammar areas in in terms of closing the gap.

Okay, maybe not serious mental gymnastics. Just a misunderstanding of the difference between anecdote and data.

To be clear, I have known a teacher who had lower expectations of PP kids and I would not be surprised to find this led to poorer outcomes in those cases. But I'm not convinced this is the norm.

What we really need to look at are areas where PP money has been used effectively (some research has been done, hopefully more in en route) to see how to replicate that in schools across the country.

But out of this arises just more 'wooliness'. Oh, it takes years, longer than your child's whole school career. It is no replacement for effectively identifying and targeting a child's actual educational needs.

And wasn't there some research done recently which showed those children who were allocated, in lesson time, to work nearly exclusively with TAs, had lower educational achievement too?

Students who are allocated to work with a TA usually have lower educational attainment, that's one of the reasons they get the TA.

The point in that research is that students with SEN who are allocated a TA need specialist teacher input and so should not be parked with the TA all the time but the TA should also be used to help the rest of the class while the teacher spends time with the student.

Interesting, noble, I didn't know that.

clarity, I absolutely don't agree that research means wooliness, or that something taking a long time is necessarily a bad thing. But then my education has been in science, so maybe I'm biased. I like it when things are shown to work. Maybe I should mention to my (cancer research) scientist sister that expecting demonstrably better outcomes and taking our time to check they work is a bad thing. The drugs she is working on will take at least 15 years to get to market. Maybe we should just throw them out there without the necessary research and see what happens.

How do you target a child's needs if nobody knows what works? Maybe each teacher should just randomly try made up interventions until something works. Or maybe we should look in to what works with similar children, then try that first.

so should not be parked with the TA all the time but the TA should also be used to help the rest of the class while the teacher spends time with the student.

I agree, noble, students should not be 'parked' with the TA all the time. All students need input from a qualified teacher. Also the more time the TA spends with the class, the more this becomes the usual way of operating even when the teacher is not working with the student in question. This is good in terms of needs progression of the student in question but awful, if on paper, the individually funded TA is still detailed in the paperwork as being there to provide full time 1 to 1 support. This distorts need.

clarity, I absolutely don't agree that research means wooliness, or that something taking a long time is necessarily a bad thing. But then my education has been in science, so maybe I'm biased. I like it when things are shown to work. Maybe I should mention to my (cancer research) scientist sister that expecting demonstrably better outcomes and taking our time to check they work is a bad thing. The drugs she is working on will take at least 15 years to get to market. Maybe we should just throw them out there without the necessary research and see what happens.

My point is, Amelia, individual children, those with additional needs, do not have the time to wait for for the research to determine what kind of educational strategy works best with a whole sector of the population (those qualifying for PP). It will be more than the years they spend in schooling for any conclusions to come to light, simply because the needs associated with such a diverse group reflect that diversity.

Anyone can become poor, get ill, have a parent who joins the armed forces or undergo the care system. The fact that the result of low educational attainment, in this diverse group of being able to qualify for PP, does not mean their needs are the same.

This is why I think it important to identify and tackle individual additional needs first and foremost and over investment in the PP qualifying factors can be a bit of a 'red herring'.

I have no idea where that cash came from, whether it was from someone else's PP? If it was being 'used correctly', or whether he was considered a borderline potential 'fail' in KS2 SATS??

Some schools provide intervention for pupils who are borderline for achieving for achieving the next level up in the SATs and with a bit of extra help can achieve it. Intervention is not always for the children who are making lower levels of progress; it can be for G&T children as well though this is increasingly rare now that budgets have been slashed so much.

How do you target a child's needs if nobody knows what works?

What needs are we talking about, Amelia?

There has been plenty of research done into literacy levels and associated SNs such as dyslexia. There has been plenty of research done into social and emotional development and the psychology of behaviour and associated SNs such as ASD, ADD, ADHD, PTSD, and PDD.

If we are talking about purely economic barriers to learning, this is pretty simple, have funds to pay for school trips, food during school time and school equipment. If we are talking about less parental input during home study time then a) do not use home study as a means of getting parents to actively teach course content (as is often the case with reading and maths) and b) provide the teaching and space to learn needed at school.

If we are talking about 'parental engagement' do not ostracise whole sectors of the community, such as those whose children qualify for PP, by making negative assumptions concerning their capabilities and treating them accordingly.

In fact it would make absolute sense, in terms of 'narrowing the gap', to abolish homework at primary. Because at primary, homework requires much parental input. Copious amounts of homework means that a significant amount of the learning and reinforcement of concepts is done at home. If teachers rely upon this to be done then, it stands to reason, those whose parents can devote less time to spending time on homework, because of ill health or working long hours in very low income jobs, for example , so potentially qualifying for PP), will be at a serious disadvantage. So the more there is a reliance on parents helping with the homework set, the more the gap widens.

I don't think the idea of narrowing the gap is meant to be achieved by getting the other pupils to achieve less.

'Workshops' to help explain the current teaching methods, in order to help with home study, only compound this issue, I outlined above. If time or stress is the reason support with homework is less available to children who receive PP then parents being taught current teaching methods, reinforce the idea that it is the parent's role to actively teach which just adds to family stress. Parental engagement, in this way, can be discouraged. It is not necessarily the parents' lack of individual ability in this area that means they cannot provide help rather it is the fact that there are other pressing priorities for their time.

Why would they achieve less, noble, if first quality teaching was available for them within school, from the professionals devoted to this role?