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Ofsted chief tells schools to make better use of pupil premium Ofsted chief tells schools to make better use of pupil premium
(about 2 hours later)
Schools receiving money from the government's £1.25bn flagship "pupil premium" policy need to show how the funds are making a difference to the achievements of poor children, the education watchdog has said. The schools minister David Laws has admitted that the use of funds allocated under the government's £1.25bn flagship "pupil premium" policy is "not good enough" after the education watchdog found that more needed to be done to make sure the money was used to help poor children.
Sir Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted's chief inspector, said finding ways of spending the premium to help the most disadvantaged pupils was not "rocket science", and Ofsted had been surprised to find that half of schools in a survey had said it was making little or no difference to the way they were being managed and operated. Sir Michael Wilshaw, Ofsted's chief inspector, said there was real concern that funds were being used simply to "plug the gap" in school budgets as a survey of 262 schools found that more than half said the premium was making "little or no difference" to the way they were being managed and operated.
Only 10% said it was having a "significant" effect, all of which were in the most deprived areas. Wilshaw told BBC Radio 4's Today programme he had found the figures surprising,
"The big issue is that this money is for our poorest children to ensure that they achieve as well as others who come from more privileged backgrounds, it is simply not good enough for heads of schools to say that it is not changing policy," he said. "This is a large chunk of public money … and that money should be directed to the needs of those poor children because the gap in education outcomes between the poorest and richest is still far too wide," he said.
"If this money is going to the main school budget and children from poor backgrounds are doing well, we do not have an issue with that and I'm sure that government won't; that is not a problem as long as they can demonstrate that is happening. Asked if the funds were being used by schools to fill budget holes in straitened times, he said: "I think so and that's an issue we need to worry about. If the money is being spent on repairing the roof and tarmacking the playground and not on helping poor children to achieve as well as their more prosperous peers then that's a real worry for us."
"It will be an issue if it just falls into the main school budget and a school can't show that it is improving the outcomes for poor children. Laws, a Liberal Democrat whose party leadership has championed the pupil premium scheme as a key means of improving social mobility, admitted the figures showed there was room for improvement and said the government was working on a strategy to "hold schools to account".
"We will be very critical of those schools that are not thinking long and hard about the use of the pupil premium. "Obviously that's not good enough and we want many more schools to use the pupil premium more effectively," he said, later adding: "Half of them are not yet using it in the most effective way and that is precisely why we've asked Ofsted to report into the use of the pupil premium so we can make sure we hold schools to account and we spread best practice."
"Most schools are subsuming it within their main budget, they are actually not ringfencing it. That is fine, as long as the school can demonstrate that they are using that money and any other money they identify to support children, poor children, to achieve outcomes that will close the gap. If they are not doing that, then we will be critical of it. He said the government would not micro-manage or dictate to headteachers how they should spend the money, but it would expect Ofsted to be critical of schools that were failing to close the gap in performance between rich and poor students. He rejected charges that this approach amounted to little concrete action, saying schools were "very sensitive to criticism" from Ofsted.
"This is not rocket science stuff. There is a wealth of good practice out there in terms of how you raise achievement and how you raise achievement particularly of youngsters from poor backgrounds." Defending the pupil premium, he said it had only been in place for a year and had already benefited schools with a high proportion of disadvantaged pupils. Of the 10% of schools surveyed by Ofsted which said the premium was having a "significant" effect, all were in the most deprived areas.
He said the money should be used to fund teachers who were effective at teaching children from poor backgrounds to do better, and other initiatives, such as enrichment programmes, extension classes and to pay staff overtime to come in to school at weekends. "The schools who really need the money, they are getting it," he said. "And I can tell you … they are delighted to be getting it, and many of them are using it very, very effectively indeed."
Sir Michael added that there were "some concerns" about a finding in the survey that heads were using a "significant amount" of the money to pay for additional teaching assistants.
This was in spite of evidence that teaching assistants did not have the same impact as good teachers, he said.
Wilshaw was speaking as Ofsted launched a report based on a survey of the views of 262 school leaders on how the pupil premium is spent. The information was gathered through inspections and telephone interviews conducted by Ofsted inspectors.
The pupil premium was introduced in April last year. This academic year, schools were allocated £1.25bn for children from low-income families who were eligible for free school meals, looked after children and those from families with parents in the armed forces.The pupil premium was introduced in April last year. This academic year, schools were allocated £1.25bn for children from low-income families who were eligible for free school meals, looked after children and those from families with parents in the armed forces.
A Department for Education spokesman said: "It's unacceptable that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to do well in school than their peers. The coalition government has introduced the pupil premium to tackle this problem. Wilshaw has said that most schools are subsuming the money within their main budget and are not ringfencing it. He said this was a suitable approach as long as schools could show they were carefully tracking the funds to make sure they were using it to support poor children through the use of, for example, extension classes, evening meals and extra Saturday morning teachers. Properly targeting the money, he said, was "not rocket science".
"We have given schools the freedom to use the additional funding in innovative ways. However, it is vital they use it to boost results for the most disadvantaged pupils, drawing on the large amount of evidence on how to make the biggest difference."
He said the department welcomed the Ofsted report and its recommendations.
"We believe that Ofsted's focus on the pupil premium will cause schools to dramatically improve the ways they use this very large amount of money.
"By protecting schools' budgets we have made sure that the pupil premium – which will be worth £2.5bn by 2014-15 – is additional money for schools."
Chris Keates, the general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, said: "This Ofsted report on the impact of the pupil premium says nothing that the NASUWT did not predict at the time the pupil premium was introduced.Chris Keates, the general secretary of the teaching union NASUWT, said: "This Ofsted report on the impact of the pupil premium says nothing that the NASUWT did not predict at the time the pupil premium was introduced.
"The pupil premium was never, despite claims to the contrary by ministers, 'new' money for schools."The pupil premium was never, despite claims to the contrary by ministers, 'new' money for schools.
"The fact that it was introduced at a time of savage cuts to the education budget and it was left to the discretion of schools on how to spend it has resulted in the premium being simply swallowed up in schools' budgets."The fact that it was introduced at a time of savage cuts to the education budget and it was left to the discretion of schools on how to spend it has resulted in the premium being simply swallowed up in schools' budgets.
"As the cuts are set to continue, any benefit there might have been as a result of the introduction of the pupil premium will be eroded away."As the cuts are set to continue, any benefit there might have been as a result of the introduction of the pupil premium will be eroded away.
"If the pupil premium is to have any widespread positive impact on the children and young people for which it was introduced, it will need to be additional to school budgets and ringfenced, with close scrutiny of how it is spent.""If the pupil premium is to have any widespread positive impact on the children and young people for which it was introduced, it will need to be additional to school budgets and ringfenced, with close scrutiny of how it is spent."
In separate comments on Thursday, Wilshaw warned that bright pupils were being let down by a combination of factors in the education system.
"We believe at Ofsted that it is a combination of low expectations of what these youngsters can achieve, that their progress is not sufficiently tracked, and what I would call … the curse of mixed-ability classes without mixed-ability teaching," he told the Daily Telegraph.
"We have got to really make sure that heads know what they are doing and are more concerned with good educational practice than doing something that's more akin to social engineering."