Developing a poverty strategy.

How can we help?

We support schools to develop a strategy for poverty. We support them to understand the unique barriers their students face, we help them to change their processes, put training in place for their staff and work to reduce those barriers.

All this helps struggling young people, it connects support with families, it re-engages pupils with education and it raises outcomes for pupil premium students.

We help by offering six elements in our support package:

1)    Detailed work to understand the barriers faced by students.

Each school context is different and the barriers that families face from living in poverty change in each context. We support schools to really understand the unique barriers their learners face through a detailed socio-economic report on their cohort. This outlines the background of the learners and is able to highlight key themes and areas that a simpler understanding can often mask.

Examples include schools that adapted parents consultations and extra-curricular options due to new understanding around the number of parents with cars available. Other examples are schools that increased access to health support for families after studying deprivation indexes or development of safeguarding initiatives around areas of risk from local crime statistics.

The study is supported by working with schools to develop listening activities with parents and carers, picking up on specific barriers directly from families and giving those affected by inequality a voice for change.

2)    Training for all staff on the effects of poverty.

Most school staff have little direct experience of poverty. Research shows that there is an ‘unconscious bias’ effect that can make teachers teach and relate to pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds differently. Our programme includes CPD for all school staff that aims to deliver an understanding of poverty, it’s effects and how we can approach it with students. An understanding of the pressures caused by inequality helps increase adaptive differentiation in the classroom, it also helps to increase safeguarding awareness. We have also found that an understanding of poverty increases inclusion and reduces the potential for behaviour conflict between staff and students.

3)    Training for all staff on a Trauma-Informed Approach.

We believe that increasing a sense of safety is key for disadvantaged students. Those students living with inequality and poverty also have a higher prevalence of ACE’s. We can deliver training for any frontline staff that develops a practical understanding of ACE’s and trauma but also gives tools and techniques for dealing with it. These tools and techniques give staff an ability to recognise a trauma reaction in a pupil and to be able to respond in a way that helps the student regulate. We have led this training across different schools and trusts and with teaching, support and pastoral staff. It has also been successful for those working with adult service users and could be helpful for schools in work with parents. Responding to unregulated pupils appropriately leads directly to lower escalation around behaviour issues, more students remaining in class and improved outcomes for students.

4)    Auditing practice.

We use our experience and expertise to assess how well schools work for their disadvantaged students. This audit helps pinpoint key actions and responses to be used and developed in stage 6. We use some aspects from the poverty proofing work by children North-East as well as pupil premium guidance from the EEF and our own research around what makes schools successful at closing the gap.

5)    Developing a local support network.

As part of developing a poverty strategy we help schools to build local support networks. We do this by mapping local resource and making contacts with key stakeholders to develop relationships. The aim is that schools improve their ability to support students and families by increasing their engagement with local support, faith and voluntary organisations that can offer services in the area. Schools have found it effective in improving their response and help for families as well as directly to pupils. This improves outcomes, answers need and also develops more positive relationships with families and carers.

6)    Developing and supporting the poverty strategy.

We don’t believe in short-term support. Our aim is to help schools to develop a poverty strategy but then to coach them through the actions in a way that develops their expertise and makes an ongoing strategy and approach sustainable without our external input. We help school leaders to write and form their strategy and then use regular coaching sessions to help support delivery. Where we need to add specific expertise, we will but the aim is to be able to reduce the frequency of support and then eventually to enable the schools poverty response to function independently.