The kinds of poverty in schools and their impact on student progress

There is already considerable evidence that the nature of school intakes matters. Schools vary in terms of the proportion of pupils with learning challenges or from disadvantaged backgrounds, for example. And this affects the resources required by each school, the progress that can be expected in terms of pupil attainment, and even pupils' sense of society and what would be an appropriate future for them. This new research is based on consideration of a newly constructed indicator of disadvantage at school, using it for a new approach to make considerations of school intakes both more accurate and fairer for all concerned.

The research questions are:

1) What is the pattern of pupil FSM 'trajectories' over their school careers? What are the characteristics of pupils who enter and leave FSM eligibility compared to those who remain eligible throughout their school life, those who have never been eligible, and those who are missing FSM data at some stage?
2) What difference does including the pupil FSM trajectories make to the apparent patterns of segregation between school intakes? Are permanently eligible or missing-FSM pupils clustered in particular areas, types of schools or schools?
3) What are the patterns of attainment of pupils with different FSM trajectories? What are the implications of this analysis for instruments of policy such as the Pupil Premium gap?
4) What difference does including the FSM trajectories make to school average progress scores? Would instruments of school performance policy, such as progress scores, be fairer given more detail about the more precise level of relative disadvantage in school intakes?

The results will be relevant for policy and practice in England, especially concerning attempts to reduce or overcome the poverty gradient in school attainment and subsequent educational participation. This study also contributes to important theoretical issues, and creates new knowledge about school systems and their performance. The study will use ESRC-supported existing official datasets to describe, better than in previous accounts, the changing nature of intakes to schools, and the link between pupil intake characteristics and subsequent attainment/participation. Previous studies and official accounts use FSM-eligibility as a binary (Y/N) variable, as opposed to the finer grained
variable to be used for these new calculations. The focus will be on secondary state-funded mainstream schools in the National Pupil Database, following cohorts from 2003/4 onwards from their primary schools to Year 11, looking at pupils moving in and out of eligibility for free school meals (FSM), and those missing relevant data. It will collate the other characteristics and the outcomes for these different patterns of pupil FSM 'trajectories', and recalculate existing and published indices of FSM segregration between schools, school types, and regions. It will use all of these results to create statistical models to assess the extent to which consideration of these different categories of pupils living in poverty - such as never eligible, recently became FSM, previously FSM, moving in and out of FSM-eligibility, and missing relevant data - changes our understanding of how serious FSM segregation between schools is, what impacts it has, what causes it, and how it relates to attainment and pupil progress.

Instruments of school performance policy, such as progress scores, may not be fair in the absence of more detail about the more precise level of relative disadvantage in school intakes, as will be provided by this study and its consideration of 'trajectories' of FSM-eligiblity over time and their interaction with other pupil background characteristics. Also policies such as the pupil premium can be made more efficient and effective, by directing extra funding to where it is most needed. The project will contribute to a better education system, a more efficient use of taxpayer-funding and a fairer society

The study has the potential to influence government policy, international and local policy-makers, stakeholders such schools and teachers, the context for school inspections, and the work of those attempting to overcome disadvantage in education. Whatever the results are they will be relevant to judgements about school performance, the fairness of school place allocation procedures, inspection findings by providing context for the pupil premium gap in each school, and teacher and departmental effectiveness judgements. They will also provide a focus for where interventions to overcome the effects of poverty on schooling would be most needed or most effective

Poverty, as assessed by FSM-eligibility, is routinely used as context for judging both individual- and school-level attainment, as an indicator of school composition, and as the basis for the pupil premium (PP) funding policy. PP itself is
important for current policies based on assessing the pupil premium gap in schools, including the work of OFSTED, RAISE, the National pupil premium Champion, and various school awards. As shown by the preparatory work for this bid, many of the calculations underlying such policies/practices may be unwittingly misleading, and unfair to certain types of schools and regions. Knowledge of the quality, reach and limitations of FSM as an indicator is therefore fundamental to accurate decision-making in all of these important areas. The results should lead to improved understanding of the nature and impact of school intakes, and understanding the impact of peers and school intake clustering on attainment and progress. The findings will have considerable implications for the use of evidence from the Pupil Premium Toolkit, and the ways in which school performance is analysed more generally. A wider community, including admission authorities, individual schools and families will also be interested, as will those concerned with school choice policies around the world.

An important part of this project will be to engineer the evidence found into an easily usable form for policy-makers and practitioners. These forms will include evidence summaries, press releases, and evidence-based recommendations. We will use a variety of our regular channels for disseminating the results in usable formats - including broadcast and print media, House of Commons Select Committee, think-tanks, admissions authorities and active groups such as the Campaign for State Education.

Given the ambitions of the project it is important to engage intended beneficiaries of the research from the outset, and several key organisations including the Joseph Rowntree Foundation, the Educational Endowment Foundation, the ATL,, and seven local authorities in areas of high disadvantage have agreed to be part of our user group already. They will help shape the objectives and progress of the research, and to create outcomes in a form that will be most useful for policy-makers and practitioners. We anticipate them being contributors from the outset, and major channels for disseminating the findings and recommendations from our research (see Letters of Support). We will add further users and groups as the study progresses.

Once this work has been completed, it should also prepare the way for further primary research in the kinds of settings represented by the local authorities in the user groups, pursuing the results of the secondary analyses into field settings.

See also Academic Beneficiaries for publication and other dissemination plans.