Greenshaw High School, Sutton, has an average size pupil premium cohort. Deputy headteacher and pupil premium lead Phil Stock, who is also Director of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Research School based at Greenshaw, tells us about his schools' approach to supporting its most disadvantaged pupils through pupil premium.
Prioritising our actions through a 'disadvantaged lens' and carefully considering how our school practices affect our most vulnerable pupil groups is key here at Greenshaw High. This mindset ensures that our limited resources, time, energy, and expertise- are focused on areas that will have the highest impact.
We know from the EEF tiered approach to pupil premium spending that the highest impact on the academic outcomes of our most disadvantaged pupils is likely to come from ensuring high quality teaching. Good teaching is crucial for all pupils, but the impact of good teaching is most acutely felt by our disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils.
Our Focus Five
Over the past three years we have developed a strategy aimed at addressing disadvantage in the classroom called the Focus Five. This approach sees teachers using class information alongside their own knowledge of the individuals to identify five pupils in each class. Teachers will then focus their attention on these pupils a little more closely, with many of our identified Focus Five pupils being eligible for pupil premium.
Teachers then consider the specific needs of these pupils when planning their lessons and make use of a range of strategies to effectively support them during lessons. Our staff can choose from our range of core teaching techniques, such as live marking and scaffolding, which are defined and practiced through coaching. These are strategies we have identified as being particularly valuable in supporting our most vulnerable learners.
Ultimately our approach empowers our teachers to use their professional expertise to determine the additional support their specific pupil may require. Ensuring our staff know the pupil premium and SEND pupils in their new classes each year gives them a helpful starting point and is key to our approach remaining effective.
In practice
Focus Five helps ensure teachers reflect on how each part of their lesson will be experienced by pupils who may struggle the most. Teachers consider if their explanations, activities, and overall objectives are accessible to their whole class. Ensuring lessons are effectively accounting for the challenges faced by students, whether these be low reading comprehension, weak inference skills, or slower processing.
Focus Five helps to avoid a focus on the majority to the detriment of those with additional needs, whilst supporting the time constraints and workload of our staff. The aim of Focus Five is not to exclude other pupils' needs but to serve as a reminder for teachers to reorient their efforts towards the pupils who need extra support or more specific approaches. This includes providing additional scaffolds, early checking in on tasks or simply offering positive praise.
Each year, there is also the challenge of inducting new staff into the Focus Five philosophy so that they understand how it supports teachers to focus their attentions on the needs of the most vulnerable pupils in their classrooms. This is achieved through a series of online training modules, as well as through dedicated time for teachers to use formal data on pupils to provisionally identify their focus pupils.
Next steps
There have been several evolutions to the model, including extending the approach to the role of the form tutor. In the same way class teachers anticipate the needs of their most vulnerable pupils, tutors also identify up to five tutees to focus their attention on more deliberately. Such as by checking in with them each morning, making sure they are prepared for the day ahead and making regular contact with home.
We have also put more resource into setting up processes that regularly review the progress of our Focus Five pupils. Curriculum reviews at the end of each half term focus on the impact of the teaching only on the Focus Five pupils. This makes the processes manageable but also ensures impact is considered through the lens of the most vulnerable. The imminent appointment of KS3 Raising Standards Leader will help us make even better use of our quantitative and qualitative data and inform our next steps in the classroom.
Further resources:
DfE publications:
Pupil premium: overview - GOV.UK
Pupil premium: allocations and conditions of grant 2024 to 2025 - GOV.UK
Using Pupil Premium: Guidance for School Leaders
Education Endowment Foundation resources:
The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium | EEF
Teaching and Learning Toolkit | EEF
DfE pupil premium webinars and blogs:
Pupil premium strategy planning webinar: insights from schools | DfE - YouTube
Pupil premium expert panel webinar | DfE - YouTube
Achieving success for all through the Pupil Premium - Teaching