Transcript Getting more bang for your buck – the education

The Pupil Premium
How to Spend it Wisely
Robert Coe
Director of the Centre for Evaluation & Monitoring (CEM) and
Professor of Education, Durham University
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Why are we here?
CEM aims to
 Create the best assessments in the world
 Empower teachers with information for
self-evaluation
 Promote evidence-based practices and
policies, based on scientific evaluation
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CEM activity
 The largest educational research unit in a
UK university
 1.1 million assessments are taken each
year
 More than 50% of UK secondary schools
use one or more CEM system
 CEM systems used in over 50 countries
 Largest provider of computerised adaptive
tests outside US
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The Pupil Premium and
Toolkit
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The pupil premium
 Aims:
o
o
o
o
to reduce the attainment gap between the highest
and lowest achieving pupils nationally
to increase social mobility
to enable more pupils from disadvantaged
backgrounds to get to the top Universities
to provide additional resource to schools to do this
 £488 last year, £600 this year, £900 next …
 Performance of PP pupils reported separately
in performance tables
 Schools required to say how PP spent & what
impact on pupil progress
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The question
How should a school
spend any ‘discretionary’
budget to achieve
maximum benefits in
learning?
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Before we started
 Advice to schools: Up to you to decide…
 Initial suggestions:
o
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Smaller classes
One to one tuition
 Does spending improve attainment?
o
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Mixed & complex findings from research
The Bananarama Principle: It ain’t what you do it’s
the way that you do it…
 Do we know some things that do work?
 Why have we failed to increase attainment
over 30 years?
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What we tried to do
 Summarise the evidence from meta-analysis
about the impact of different strategies on
learning (attainment).
o
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As found in research studies
These are averages
 Apply quality criteria to evaluations: rigorous
designs only
 Estimate the size of the effect
o
Standardised Mean Difference = ‘Months of gain’
 Estimate the costs of adopting
o
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Information not always available
Toolkit of Strategies to
Improve Learning
http://www.suttontrust.com/research/to
olkit-of-strategies-to-improve-learning/
Now known as
The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit
http://www.educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/toolkit/
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In the Toolkit
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Summaries
What is it?
How effective is it?
How secure is the
evidence?
What are the costs?
How applicable is it?
Further information
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Overview of value for money
Promising
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May be
worth it
Effect Size (months gain)
Feedback
Meta-cognitive
Pre-school
Peer tutoring
1-1 tutoring
Homework
0
£0
Summer
schools
Parental
AfL
involvement
Learning Individualised
Sports
learning
styles
Arts
Performance
Ability grouping
pay
Cost per pupil
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ICT
Smaller
classes
After
school
Not
worth it
£1000
Teaching
assistants
Top tips for improvement
1. Think hard about learning
2. Focus on implementation
3. Teachers really matter
4. Invest in good CPD
5. Evaluate
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1. Think hard about
learning
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Key messages
 Some things that are popular or widely
thought to be effective are probably not
worth doing
o
Ability grouping (setting); After-school clubs;
Teaching assistants; Smaller classes;
Performance pay
 Some things look ‘promising’
o
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Effective feedback; Meta-cognitive and self
regulation strategies; Peer
tutoring/peer‐assisted learning strategies;
Homework
Does your theory of learning
explain why …
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Ability grouping (setting)
After-school clubs
Teaching assistants
Smaller classes
Performance pay
…do not work (or are not
cost effective)?
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 Feedback
 Meta-cognitive strategies
 Peer tutoring
… are effective?
Do we care about learning?
 Which of the following are evidence of learning?
o
o
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Students are busy: lots of work is done
Students are engaged, interested, motivated
Classroom is ordered, calm, under control
 What do school students value most?
o
o
o
o
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Social interactions & status with peers
Keeping out of trouble
Pleasing teachers: good marks, neat writing, polite
Thinking hard about really challenging problems
A simple theory of learning
Learning happens
when people have
to think hard
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2. Focus on
implementation
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Implementation
 These strategies have been shown to be costeffective in research studies
 But when we have tried to implement evidencebased strategies we have not seen system-wide
improvement
 We don’t know how to get schools/teachers who are
not currently doing them to do so in ways that are
o
o
o
o
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True to the key principles
Feasible in real classrooms – with all their constraints
Scalable & replicable
Sustainable
3. Teachers really matter
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What matters most?
 What makes most difference to how much a
pupil learns
1. Having a good class teacher?
2. Having a good headteacher / strong leadership in
the school?
3. Family income?
4. Family support for learning?
5. School culture / peer group valuing learning?
6. Community support for the school?
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Identifying the best teachers
 Individual classroom teachers account for more of the
variation in students’ learning gains than any other factor
 That includes factors such as expenditure, leadership
behaviours, school culture, social disadvantage
 Recruitment, support and retention of effective teachers
must be key – along with training/development and
performance management
 But how do we know who the really effective teachers are?
o
o
o
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o
o
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Colleagues observing lessons?
Pupils’ test scores?
Pupils’ ratings?
Parents’ ratings?
Ofsted ratings?
Colleagues (including senior managers) perceptions?
How do you make
a typical teacher
slightly better?
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4. Invest in good CPD
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How do we get students to learn hard things?
Eg
 Place value
 Persuasive
writing
 Music
composition
 Balancing
chemical
equations
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• Explain what they should do
• Demonstrate it
• Get them to do it (with
gradually reducing support)
• Provide feedback
• Get them to practice until it is
secure
How do we get teachers to learn hard things?
Eg
 Using formative
assessment
 Assertive
discipline
 How to teach
algebra
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• Explain what they should do
What do we know about what
makes CPD effective?
This slide is intentionally blank
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What (probably) makes CPD
effective?
 Intense: at least 15 hours, preferably 50
 Sustained: over at least two terms
 Content focus: on teachers’ knowledge of
subject content & how students learn it
 Active: opportunities to try it out & discuss
 Supported: external feedback and
networks to improve and sustain
 Evidence based: promotes strategies
supported by robust evaluation evidence
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5. Evaluate
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Faking ‘school improvement’ (1)
 Wait for a bad year and/or choose a bad school to
start with. Things can only get better.
 Take on any initiative, and ask everyone who put
effort into it whether they feel it worked. No-one
wants to feel their effort was wasted.
 Define ‘improvement’ in terms of perceptions and
ratings of teachers. DO NOT conduct any proper
assessments – they may disappoint.
 Only study schools or teachers that recognise a
problem and are prepared to take on an initiative.
They’ll probably improve whatever you do.
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Faking ‘school improvement’ (2)
 Conduct some kind of evaluation, but don’t let
the design be too good – poor quality
evaluations are much more likely to show
positive results.
 If any improvement occurs in any aspect of
performance, focus attention on that rather
than on any areas or schools that have not
improved or got worse (don’t mention them!).
 Put some effort into marketing and
presentation of the school. Once you start to
recruit better students, things will improve.
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Bad reasons not to evaluate
 We are sure this works
 This is so important we need it to work
 Everyone is working really hard and fully committed to
this
 Evaluating would be a lot of work
 We don’t have the data to be able to evaluate
 We don’t know how to evaluate
 We can’t do a really good evaluation, so what is the
point of doing it badly?
 We do happy sheets and ask people what they
thought of it; isn’t that enough?
 You can’t do randomised trials in education
 What works is different in different schools or contexts
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Top tips for improvement
1. Think hard about learning
2. Focus on implementation
3. Teachers really matter
4. Invest in good CPD
5. Evaluate
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