A new report from Ofsted cites case study after case study where pupil premium funding is being used to provide EAL language teaching and EAL related literacy support. In the report The Pupil Premium How schools are spending the funding successfully to maximise achievement (Ofsted 2013) , the vast majority of the case studies of effective practice are drawn from schools with high numbers of ethnic minority learners and high proportions of bilingual learners. A number of the case studies show work with relatively newly arrived bilingual learners, for example:
A boy from Romania joined the school in 2010. He was a Year 4 pupil and spoke no English. The school recruited a multilingual assistant for two hours each week, using funding from the Pupil Premium. In addition, the boy was given targeted support by the school’s specialist ‘English as an additional language’ teaching assistant. This allowed the pupil to receive one-to-one English and reading tuition five times per week, and he made good progress. When he joined Year 5 the pupil received four phonics sessions a week, four one-to-one reading sessions and 90 minutes of additional English support. The school recognised the boy’s good potential and set challenging targets. Termly targets were shared with the pupil and also his parents, using a translator. (p20)
Other case studies illustrates how pupil premium funding is used to finance additional EAL teaching for more advanced bilingual learners:
The school identified that one of the barriers to learning for a group of Year 9 pupils who speak English as an additional language was that they were often making errors with subject specific vocabulary. This was sometimes holding them back from gaining the higher levels, even though they were able pupils. A number of these pupils were eligible for the Pupil Premium, so the school decided to employ a teaching assistant – a specialist in supporting pupils who speak English as an additional language – to work specifically with selected pupils on this aspect of their learning. The assistant worked with pupils in targeted lessons, but also liaised with teachers about the vocabulary that pupils would need for forthcoming pieces of work, and specific sentence constructions with which they struggled. As a result, pupils were soon able to use and understand academic language and access most aspects of the curriculum at an appropriate level. (p16)
The practices illustrate that language learning needs do not disappear with funding cuts. Whilst NALDIC is reassured that some pupil premium funding is being used to ensure language learning needs are met, where does this leave EAL learners who are not eligible for the pupil premium? In NALDIC's view, eligibility to pupil premium funding is not an appropriate mechanism to determine whether bilingual learners are taught the English skills they need to do well in our schools.
The publication summarises good practice in relation to pupil premium spending which includes:
- carefully ringfenced the funding so that they always spent it on the target group of pupils
- never confused eligibility for the Pupil Premium with low ability, and focused on supporting their disadvantaged pupils to achieve the highest levels
- thoroughly analysed which pupils were underachieving, particularly in English and mathematics, and why
- drew on research evidence (such as the Sutton Trust toolkit) and evidence from their own and others’ experience to allocate the funding to the activities that were most likely to have an impact on improving achievement
- understood the importance of ensuring that all day-to-day teaching meets the needs of each learner, rather than relying on interventions to compensate for teaching that is less than good n allocated their best teachers to teach intervention groups to improve mathematics and English, or employed new teachers who had a good track record in raising attainment in those subjects
- used achievement data frequently to check whether interventions or techniques were working and made adjustments accordingly, rather than just using the data retrospectively to see if something had workedn made sure that support staff, particularly teaching assistants, were highly trained and understood their role in helping pupils to achieve
- systematically focused on giving pupils clear, useful feedback about their work, and ways that they could improve itn ensured that a designated senior leader had a clear overview of how the funding was being allocated and the difference it was making to the outcomes for pupilsn ensured that class and subject teachers knew which pupils were eligible for the Pupil Premium so that they could take responsibility for accelerating their progress
- had a clear policy on spending the Pupil Premium, agreed by governors and publicised on the school websiten provided well-targeted support to improve attendance, behaviour or links with families where these were barriers to a pupil’s learningn had a clear and robust performance management system for all staff, and included discussions about pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium in performance management meetings
- thoroughly involved governors in the decision making and evaluation processn were able, through careful monitoring and evaluation, to demonstrate the impact of each aspect of their spending on the outcomes for pupils.
Where schools were less successful in spending the funding, they tended to have at least some of the following characteristics:
- a lack of clarity about the intended impact of the spending
- spent the funding indiscriminately on teaching assistants, with little impact
- did not monitor the quality and impact of interventions well enough, even where other monitoring was effective
- did not have a good performance management system for teaching assistants and other support staff
- did not have a clear audit trail for where the funding had been spent
- focused on pupils attaining the nationally expected level at the end of the key stage (Level 4, five A* to C grades at GCSE) but did not go beyond these expectations, so some more able eligible pupils underachieved
- planned their Pupil Premium spending in isolation to their other planning, for example, it was not part of the school development plann compared their performance to local rather than national data, which suppressed expectations if they were in a low-performing local authority 4 Toolkit of Strategies to Improve Learning – Summary for Schools, Spending the Pupil Premium http://www.suttontrust.com/research/teaching-and-learning-toolkit-july-2012/4 www.ofsted.gov.uk
- compared the performance of their pupils who were eligible for free school meals with other eligible pupils nationally, rather than all pupils, again lowering expectations
- did not focus their pastoral work on the desired outcomes for pupils and did not have any evidence to show themselves whether the work had or had not been effectiven did not have governors involved in making decisions about the Pupil Premium, or challenging the way in which it was allocated.
Those with longer memories may recall very similar sets of good and bad practice behaviours being produced by Ofsted (and subsequently the National Strategies) in relation to EAL and 'EMAG' provision over the past 20 years. Plus ca change, except that previous lists normally highlighted the importance of qualified teachers, whereas teaching assistants now feature as the new specialists.
