Social Mobility in SESL

We have interviewed a range of SESL trusts to find out

how they are improving the performance of
disadvantaged pupils.
• Slides 2 to 5 summarise common practices used by
trusts.
• Slides 6 to 8 show trust-specific case-studies,
summarising particularly interesting and innovative
practices strategies.
 Trust A
Cross-phase MAT of around 15 academies based across more than one LA
Main message : This trust wanted to highlight the particular challenge posed by the
selective education in their area. Trust leaders felt there is a need to compare
secondary moderns’ progress with each other, rather than comparing their progress
with all state schools, which include grammars.
MAT Leadership and Structure
The trust ensures that the lines of communication in their leadership structure is very
strong, and that internal communication rests on open, transparent and honest
discussion. Heads and subject leads meet regularly to share ideas and best practice,
and the performance of disadvantaged children is always an agenda item. The
leadership ensures buy-in from the teaching staff through stressing the moral
purpose of giving disadvantaged pupils better life chances.
Teaching and Learning
The trust employs a range of teaching and learning strategies that contribute to the
successful performance of disadvantaged pupils in their trust. They focus on effective
writing and literacy strategies, particularly at KS4. This includes a forensic approach
to the quality of exercise books, sending pupil’s books home to show parents and a
particular emphasis on extended writing and literacy, which are particularly critical for
the transition of disadvantaged pupils to the workplace.
Regional Challenges
The trust’s schools are located in a range of locations from affluent areas to areas
with a high proportion of disadvantaged pupils. The geographical location of the
school informs the trust’s assessment of the barriers to pupil performance.
Innovative Practice: Tackling Absenteeism
The trust tackled absenteeism through careful and forensic monitoring of
disadvantaged pupil attendance, and took pro-active approaches such as recognising
individual pupil triggers – this could even be the release of a popular computer game.
Trust B
Primary phase MAT of around 15 academies based across
more than one LA
Main message: The MAT’s ethos is that every child should fulfil
their potential, and that whilst the context of a pupil’s circumstances
does matter, it should not be an excuse for failure. They stress the
importance of providing clarity of expectations and a ‘whole school’
approach.
Teaching and Learning
Rather than having individualised strategies for different types of
pupils, the trust concentrates on quality first teaching and teacher
development. There is also a focus on strong pastoral support for
all children. Some schools in the trust use sports coaches as
positive role models for disadvantaged pupils.
Pupil Premium
The trust has a ‘whole school approach’ to pupil premium spending
and does not differentiate between its disadvantaged pupils and
non-disadvantaged pupils. At one school, for example, pupil
premium funds were used to hire more teachers per class. The trust
believe that this is more effective than directing money at specific
measures such as one-to-one tuition or intervention, as this is not
effective or practical in schools with high numbers of disadvantaged
pupils.
Innovative Practice: Teacher Retention and Recruitment
Trust B regard the recruitment, retention and training of teachers as
key to raising the attainment of both disadvantaged pupils and all
pupils. All teachers undertake a masters course after two years of
service. Some schools are designated teaching schools where the
staff-to-pupil ratios are low.
 Trust C
Cross-phase MAT of around 10 academies based across more
than one LA
Main message The MAT believes that if ‘every child matters’, there
is no justification for treating any child differently, whatever their
circumstance. This insight determines their strategy for improving
the performance of disadvantaged pupils.
Ethos and Approach
The trust’s approach to improving the performance of
disadvantaged pupils is informed by the belief that the challenge of
social mobility has to be owned and understood by everyone in the
MAT, and that it is more effective to focus on the big picture, rather
than ad hoc, compartmentalised strategies. For example, instead of
buying revision guides for disadvantaged pupils, the trust believes
a safe, clean environment which is open till 6pm is more useful for
disadvantaged pupils.
Pupil Premium
The trust deliberately does not have a pupil premium champion.
Rather, pupil premium funding is focused on hiring teaching staff,
creating lower workloads for teachers, and giving them the energy
and time to focus on improving the performance of disadvantaged
pupils. The reflects the trust’s ‘every child matters’ approach.
Innovative Practice: Teaching and Learning
The trust has experimented with withholding information from
teachers about prior attainment and pupil characteristics. This
fosters a culture of ‘no excuses’ where circumstance cannot be
used as an excuse for failure. It also challenges the teachers to
engage with pupils free from any prior assumptions. Where this
has been tried, it has resulted in better performance.
Trust D
Primary phase MAT of around 10 academies based in one LA
Main message: The MAT believes that ‘one size doesn’t fit all’ and aims to tailor
support to the needs of each child. The trust has high aspirations for all and has the
same standard for all children, irrespective of their circumstance.
Leadership and MAT Structure
The trust believes that the greatest barrier to school improvement and tackling
educational disadvantage is poor leadership and resistance to change. In order to
ensure these challenges are overcome, the trust has standardised systems and
processes in the schools across the MAT. Hubs of schools are linked geographically
and this helps to distribute resources effectively.
Pupil Premium
The trust invests pupil premium funding into staff training and development to create
a strong network of specialists to support pupils. This reflects its emphasis on
‘Quality First Teaching’ for all pupils as the most effective way of improving
disadvantaged pupil performance.
Innovative Practice: Pastoral Care
The wellbeing of pupils is at forefront of the trust’s values, and is an important part of
the trust’s strategy to improve the performance of disadvantaged pupils. Measures
that the trust has employed to improve pupil wellbeing include: hiring trained senior
social worker; adopting a restorative justice approach to poor behaviour and a focus
on metacognition & self regulation in nurture groups. The trust also screened all
pupils’ social and emotional needs before they entered the school in order to assess
how best to ensure their wellbeing.
Trust leaders placed significance on creating a team to support a child, particularly
for those pupils from the hardest to reach families. They found that parent workshops
didn’t work for their most disadvantaged so they insist that staff go to pupils’ homes.
Teams include: teacher, SENCO, Parent support advisor, trained social worker.
 Trust E
Cross-phase MAT of around 25 academies
based in one LA
Accountability Framework
To assess pupil premium outcomes, the trust
have put in place a framework of standardised
school visits and proformas. They use a non-
profit school data analysis organisation which
provides standardised data system across all
schools in the trust. The trust says that this has
helped drive pupil premium outcomes.
Innovative Practice: Cultural Enrichment
The trust has identified the 10 things pupils
should do before KS2, such as going to the zoo
or seaside. Further to this, many individual
schools within the trust work with the parish
priest and are part of sports networks and after-
school clubs.
Trust F
Cross-phase MAT of around 40 academies based across more than one LA
Main message: The trust focuses on pupil achievement and academic performance.
The insight that pupils should leave their schools with the skills to get a good job
underlines the trust’s strong exam focus.
Attendance and behaviour
The trust views high levels of attendance and good behaviour as fundamental to
ensuring their pupils achieve. Whilst all pupils benefit from this, the impact particularly
advantages disadvantaged pupils as their home lives are often more chaotic and
regularly attendance at a safe and orderly school helps them to overcome the
circumstances of their home life. Therefore focussing on ‘bolt-ons’ before these areas
have been addressed is not a good use of resources. Schools take a variety of
strategies to improve attendance and behaviour, including hiring education welfare
officers, using a minibus collect pupils from their home, fining parents and raising
parental awareness.
Pupil Premium
In line with the trust’s ethos, pupil premium funding is targeted towards academic
attainment. The trust uses the funding for a range of measures including smaller groups,
extra classes on Saturdays, after-school and during the half-term classes, and one-to-
one tuition. However, the trust stresses that the priority is to get the basics of behaviour
and teaching and learning right, with specific interventions the ‘icing on the cake’.
Leadership and structures
The trust’s leadership ensures that disadvantaged pupil performance is a priority for
everyone in the trust. To achieve this, the trust emphasises the importance of regular
reporting and good practice sharing. Trustees receive a data report on disadvantaged
pupil performance at every board meeting. Good practice is shared through groups of
principles discussing what works, workshops at CPD events in which specific
techniques and strategies are shared, and subject level networks which aim to raise
achievement as high as possible.
Commons practices employed by trusts
Trust Values: central to MATs’ strategies for their disadvantaged pupils were their ethos, visions and cultures. Trust
values are the driver behind how and why trusts create their pupil premium strategies.

1. A clear vision must be communicated to all employees in the trust. Often trusts have mission statements such as ‘no excuses’ or ‘every child
matters’ but it is important that these can be felt on the ground in a meaningful way. Leaders stressed that the social context of a school has an
impact and should be accounted for but should not be used as a justification for the poor performance of disadvantaged pupils. There should be
absolute clarity of expectations. One MAT stressed that, whilst the head-teachers of their individual schools have flexibility, the aim is the same in all
schools in the MAT- “well behaved, focused, and polite” children.

2. Everyone needs to understand the issues; trust leaders felt it was their duty to raise the awareness of the importance of pupil premium to
ensure that all staff know that social mobility is everyone’s responsibility. Leaders felt that the moral purpose of improving the outcomes of
disadvantaged pupils must be stressed by the trust leadership.

3. Disadvantage goes beyond pupil premium; there was a consensus across all trust leaders that the term “pupil premium” did not define
disadvantage. Many leaders felt the key was not to make assumptions about disadvantaged pupils. They emphasised the need to develop a culture
of rigour. Trust leaders tackled the challenges of raising aspirations when there’s a cycle of deprivation. Interventions to raise aspirations included:
high expectations of pupils’ literacy, half-termly pupil progress meetings and business mentoring programmes.

4. Be inclusive; Interviewees stressed the importance of having high aspirations for all, irrespective of whether they are disadvantaged. Trusts
highlighted the importance of avoiding a patronising attitude.
Pupil premium funding: Many of these discussions centred around whether to take whole school approaches to
tackling underperformance, or to create specific interventions for vulnerable groups.

Whole-school approaches Interventions

1. Invest in teachers; interviewees highlighted the benefits of 1. Identify the barriers and tackle them explicitly; areas of focus
investing pupil premium funds in staff training and development, citing included: attendance, behaviour, T&L, assessment and leadership.
the quality of the teacher as the most important factor that affects Attendance proved a challenge for many; interventions included: mini-
pupil progress, particularly for disadvantaged groups. bus runs; home visits; use of School Learning Advisors.

2. Use specialists to work with vulnerable pupils; one trust focused

2. Reduce teacher workload; many MAT leaders said they used investment on specialist practitioners, such as the development of
pupil premium funds to allow them to increase staffing, and lower SENCO expertise or hiring trained social workers to work with
workloads for teachers – specifically to give them the energy and time disadvantaged pupils, which was felt to have made a significant impact
to focus on improving the performance of disadvantaged pupils. for those students with extreme social and emotional barriers.

3. Appoint nominated pupil premium leads; some trusts use these

individuals to develop and own the PP strategy who focus on reviewing
pupil premium outcomes. However, not all interviewees shared this
approach: one trust deliberately did not have a pupil premium champion
to try to ensure that all staff took responsibility for the issue.

4. Intervene early; this was a theme that ran through many of the
interviews. Some trusts spent the majority of their pupil premium funding
on intervention in year 7 to close gaps before pupils entered KS4.

5. Build cultural capital; this was often seen as a key deficit of

disadvantaged pupils that had wide-reaching ramifications. Free
excursions to cultural events, membership to The Brilliant Club and after-
school clubs are on offer at many of the trusts.
Leadership & MAT structure: MAT leaders highlighted the need to communicate their vision and strategy clearly
whilst, at the same time, giving freedom to individual schools to create their own strategies to help pupils combat their
disadvantage.

1. Open communication is the mechanism for sharing what works; Interviewees stressed the importance of open, honest and direct
communication between school leaders within the MAT, especially about failure and disadvantaged pupil performance. Many MATs achieve this by
engaging in regular meetings between heads and subject leads across the MAT, ensuring pupil premium performance is a standing agenda item in
meetings communication, using consistent terminology, fostering a culture that shares and learns from mistakes.

2. Systems provide the mechanism for raising standards; the benefits of standardisation across schools within the MAT were emphasised by
interviewees, as they made processes, systems and structures more efficient. This involves accountability at every leadership level, from the SLT to
local governance. One trust has trust standards leads in each local governing body to ensure that trust’s expectations were met across the board,
including for disadvantaged pupils.

3. Context is crucial; systems are important but it’s also important to recognise the different contexts that schools operate in present different
barriers, with MATs often including a range of schools with varied levels of PP, SEN and EAL proportions. Many trust leaders favoured creating
over-arching systems and process that allowed for activities which heads could tailor to the context of the school.

4. Be explicit with accountability; many of the interviewees described the accountability systems that they had created within every layer of
leadership, from nominated governor pupil premium leads to disadvantaged networks made up of subject leads. Almost all felt there was a need to
keep employees explicitly accountable for PP outcomes. Some trusts ensured that trustees received a report on disadvantaged pupil performance
at each Board meeting

5. Teachers are the change-makers; all interviewees focussed on achieving buy-in from teachers. This was done by modelling behaviour and
reiterating the moral purpose of raising disadvantaged pupil performance.

6. Look outwards as well as inwards; MATs highlighted the importance of working within the community, particularly with feeder schools, local
nurseries and parents, especially when pupils have severe needs. They found it essential to have systems of tracking families in-need.
Teaching & Learning: MATs’ attitude differed towards how they used data to identify barriers to learning. Some
emphasised the importance of continual assessment to track progress of their disadvantaged pupils; others
emphasised the need to look holistically at the “whole child”.

1. Identifying barriers: Interviewees told us that the barriers to learning are intrinsically linked to the social context of their schoosl. The key is to
break down school-wide disadvantage and from there, identify the barriers to each individual student in order to focus resources on those with the
highest needs.

2. Quality First Teaching: A common view amongst trusts was that a rigorous focus on improving the quality of teaching for all pupils was the most
important aspect of a strategy for disadvantaged pupils. This was considered more effective than having individualised strategies for different types of
pupils.

3. Assessing Progress: One trust told us hthat they have daily interventions for those identified as falling behind that day. Others emphasised the
need for a forensic analysis of data to ensure rigorous academic standards and to ensure teachers and leaders don’t make assumptions about what
the barriers to learning are. Conversely, one trust experimented with withholding from teachers information about prior attainment and pupil
characteristics. The interviewee argued that this helped foster a no-excuses culture.

4. Pastoral Support: Interviewees agreed that a strong focus on the well-being of pupils was crucial, with many mentioning the need for a focus on
strong pastoral support for all children. Trusts employed a range of measures, including a restorative justice approach which saw a dramatic change in
pupil behaviour and the use of metacognition and “nurture groups” to improve resilience.