The implications of poverty for educational effectiveness in all schools

School Effectiveness & Socio-economic Disadvantage

• Around 1 in 3 pupils in Welsh schools live in relative poverty.

• There is a well-established link between socio-economic disadvantage and under-achievement.

• Almost 50% of children in poverty in Britain do not live in identified disadvantaged communities.

• There is little evidence of our making great in-roads in improving outcomes for disadvantaged learners.

Some key issues

• all children and young people … economically, socially, personally active citizens and lifelong learners

• social inclusion … developing well-being and personalising learning

• a curriculum that motivates and engages … to achieve potential

• integrated services … to improve well-being

• meeting the needs of the community and engaging the community as partners

National Purpose for Schools

The Framework

- relatively neutral

Effective schools are community focused and relevant to the lives of children and young people outside the school and school hours, recognising linguistic and cultural diversity. Whilst the need for community focus applies to all schools, it is particularly important in our most disadvantaged communities, where schools have a major role to play in offering children and young people the experiences and opportunities that their more privileged peers take for granted.

Working with others

Local authorities have an important role to play in promoting and supporting the development of networks of professional practice between schools in their area and across local authority boundaries, and in promoting the common moral purpose, social justice and equity that lie at the heart of school effectiveness.

Networks of professional practice

The Assembly Government is responsible for aligning its resources and programmes to support all children and young people to achieve high levels of personal excellence. This includes programmes to tackle learner disadvantage, additional learning needs and inclusion and variation in performance.

Intervention and support

This [the use of evidence] cannot be limited to narrow academic attainment and includes a range of analyses taking account of contextual factors with the aim of identifying and measuring the wider skills that children and young people gain.

Improvement and accountability

Authorities need to ensure that:• an appropriate range of data on school

performance and local context is collected, analysed and fed back to schools…

For successful learning and teaching to take place, building upon the learning capacities of children and young people, the curriculum must be relevant and personalised to the needs of the child or young person. In Wales, national requirements ensure curriculum entitlement, whilst the flexibility inherent within the revised curriculum recognises children and young people’s personal development. In turn, this personalises learning and prepares them to play an active part in society as young citizens, participating in community and working life in the 21st century.

Curriculum and teaching

People and Work Unit

- some issues

No intrinsic link.

However, a range of inter-connected factors relating to:

• weaknesses in learners’ personal capabilities and motivation;

• poor or ineffective support;

• challenges facing schools with high proportions of disadvantaged pupils.

Poverty and poor achievement

Key issues from P&WU paper

• Appropriate approaches that could be more effective• No magic bullet• Need to be more holistic:

– literacy & numeracy– social and emotional skills– ‘community’ focus

• Weaknesses in capabilities, motivation and esteem• Poor and ineffective support• Schools’ multiple challenges• School Effectiveness Framework• Evaluation for sustainability

Schools’ use of RAISE funding

• Tended towards:– ‘tried and tested’ approaches– ‘intervention and support’ rather than more holistic approaches– addressing immediate rather than long-term challenges

• Relatively little strengthening of links with non-school agencies

• More comfortable promoting ‘equality of outcomes over equality of opportunity by targeting underachievement rather than just socio-economic disadvantage– few schools targeted moderate or high attaining pupils– few girls included in target groups

• multi-agency working• strenghtening schools’ community focus through

greater involvement of the wider community• engaging parents• developing nurture groups• broader approaches to language development as a

means of improving learning• making the school curriculum more relevant and

vocational• improving motivation, behaviour, attendance and

self esteem• supporting disadvantaged pupils at transition

Key Themes from RAISE

Estyn

- conclusions & recommendations

Conclusions include:

• local authorities vary in the performance of their fsm pupils;

• almost all schools targeted pupils on the basis of criteria other than disadvantage;

• schools do not do enough to monitor the progress and achievements of disadvantaged pupils;

• few schools try to compensate for the barriers to progress of pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds.

Estyn Report on RAISE 2009

Recommendations include that:

• schools should work with others to provide a comprehensive, community focussed approach to compensating for factors that hinder the progress of disadvantaged pupils;

• local authorities should use data on the performance of disadvantaged pupils when monitoring and challenging schools.

Estyn Report on RAISE 2009

The implications of poverty for educational effectiveness in all schools