10 Ways to understand the barriers for Pupil Premium students.
10 ways to understand the barriers for Pupil Premium students in your context.
Before it is possible to go about working on an effective strategy to support the progress and success of your pupil premium students you need to really understand the barriers that the young people in your school context face.
As school leaders we talk about issues our disadvantaged students face but it’s so easy to generalise – how do we really know which issues create the biggest barriers to success in our context? Most teachers are middle-class, living in a secure environment and working in a system that values middle-class norms. Books like Equity in Education1 (if you haven’t read it, you should!), outline some of the research behind the cultural biases and barriers a pupil premium student comes across in the classroom. We can’t assume to know the detail of these without some careful intentional work to unpick them. Whilst barriers to learning are common to all, the exact detail and therefore our responses can differ even in very geographically close settings.
So, what can we do to understand the barriers our students face? Here’s a few suggestions, not an exhaustive list but something to prompt some thinking and ideas. It’s not solutions to the issues you’ll find but more a list to make sure any solutions you come up with are actually solving the problems your students have, not the problems you think they have.
As an important aside more than 4.2 million children are currently living in poverty in the UK. Only 2.2 million pupils qualified for pupil premium in 2023. The barriers around disadvantage aren’t limited to pupils with the ‘pupil premium’ label. Your work shouldn’t ignore the fact that a proportion of your cohort won’t be pupil premium but will face the same barriers.
1) Pupil voice
Of course, it’s obvious. Speak to the students – see what they have to say. But it needs a careful approach. If you use open conversation or debate, then it has to be structured with someone the students trust. If a pupil is going to open up about barriers and vulnerabilities, particularly if those happen out of school then they probably are less likely to do this in front of their peers and definitely not with staff with whom they have no positive relationship. They may respond more honestly to a well-structured anonymous questionnaire.
2) Parent voice
Speaking to parents or carers can be hugely helpful. In some examples schools have realised that families that worked in the cash economy were struggling with a cashless dinner system or that parents evenings were hard to access for single parents with young kids. It’s important to make sure that the right parents are given chance to discuss both the barriers for their children and for them in partnering with school. The most successful examples of this have been where schools create opportunities for these discussions, they use their most trusted staff, those with positive relationships with the community. Family liaison or pastoral workers to actively and personally invite parents or carers into school. They offer them something positive in return, a fish and chip supper, a coffee and cake morning or an opportunity to see their kids perform.
3) Visit your catchment area
Lots of school leaders and staff live outside their catchment area (understandably!) and drive in and out of school each day without really knowing the catchment area. Do you know what the environment is like in which your pupils grow up? Do you know what the area is like at night? Which areas are noisy or unsafe? Where families can access support, health resources or help?
4) Speak to colleagues
The most valuable colleagues to speak to are those who live in the community (dinner ladies are often excellent for this) or those who have taught at the school for a long time. They often understand the changing dynamics across generations and the influence of key community members on pupils.
5) Speak to your DSL
In a lot of schools’, the progress of pupils is viewed in a separate silo to safeguarding. It’s understandable that DSL’s work in a confidential way but if anyone can tell you what the experiences of some of your most needy pupils are then it’s the DSL. In almost every school context the DSL will be hearing of home situations that most of us, who are fortunate to have had settled, supportive upbringings can hardly comprehend. These situations, of home with parents who are addicts, of social care intervention, of dire poverty, of abuse occur more often in our pupil premium students. Talking to your DSL will help you understand what some of the barriers to learning are for your neediest students, in many cases, if you didn’t before you’ll be amazed that these students even manage to get themselves to school at all.
6) Interrogate the socio-economic data
There is a huge amount of data available online that helps to paint a picture of your catchment area. You can analyse on a postcode level the deprivation; you can look at crime rates or employment rates. You can look at how many households have a bedroom each or the proportion of parents with cars. You may want to take a different approach to parents evening or evening clubs if you know most of your parents and pupils rely on public transport to get to and from school. It’s also easy to presume all pupil premium students struggle for a quiet place to study but not all areas of deprivation have a problem with housing stocks and all your students may have their own bedroom, for them the barriers will be different. A comparison of the different aspects of deprivation in your area may show that health is a problem, and you can respond by increasing access to the school nurse or improving signposting to services for families.
Postcode level data can be analysed here:
Deprivation data can be found here:
https://www.gov.uk/guidance/english-indices-of-deprivation-2019-mapping-resources#indices-of-deprivation-2019-explorer-postcode-mapper
7) Interrogate your in-school data
In-school data can show the pupils that are struggling the most and the commonalities between them. Progress data can reveal trends at a school, subject, class or individual level. In addition to progress data, attendance and behaviour data can help reveal trends, it can be matched to the postcode data, if your pupil premium students from certain postcodes all have attendance issues then maybe a minibus pickup or support with transport can help.
8) Shadow some pupils
Pick some of your pupil premium students and spend some time tracking their school experience. Do it right from their arrival in the morning, see the areas they struggle, the types of activity, the subjects and the staff they find a challenge and those they excel at.
9) Analyse the price of your school year
Every school has a different calendar and different demands across the school year. When in your school year will your families face the most financial demands? When are your expectations (World book day costumes or harvest services) going to cause a challenge. One school realised that the donations for their harvest collection had come from foodbanks. They changed their practice and now do a ‘reverse harvest’ where they provide food for their needy families rather than ask for donations.
Use the resource here for support in ‘poverty proofing’ your school:
https://children-ne.org.uk/poverty-proofing-the-school-day-resources-hub/
10) Critique your curriculum
Where in your curriculum is there disadvantage built in for students growing up in working class or deprived homes and communities? What assumptions are made about previous knowledge or cultural capital? How does your curriculum include working class and local community identity? Can your students see themselves or people similar to them represented in the curriculum they study?
Talk to us for more support around how to build a strategy for your school around this information - arrange a conversation here
1 Equity in Education by Lee Elliot Major and Emily Briant
