Despite the government pumping £2.5bn into the pupil premium since its launch in 2011, a National Audit Office (NAO) report published earlier this month has found the funding and policy is yet to reach its full potential.
The premium, provided to about two million disadvantaged children aged five to 16, awards local authorities £1,300 per primary pupil and £935 for each secondary pupil per year to pay for additional learning support. They also receive £1,900 in premium payments for each looked-after child.
The NAO report, Funding for disadvantaged pupils, says schools are not using effective, low-cost interventions often enough. In particular, it criticises the widespread use - 71 per cent of schools do so - of the premium to fund teaching assistants, which the NAO says "will only improve results if schools learn to deploy these staff more effectively".
The report also found that 77 per cent of schools use some of their premium for activities designed to support all pupils, which risks "diluting the funding's impact".
In response to the findings, Education Secretary Nicky Morgan has warned schools against using a "scatter-gun" approach to spending their funding.
The NAO has also called on the Department for Education to take "further steps to reduce schools' use of ineffective, costly activities" by providing schools with more advice and guidance about the most effective ways to spend the premium.
The report references evidence gathered by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) - a charity founded by The Sutton Trust to improve disadvantaged pupils' attainment - as a good pointer to the most effective interventions.
The EEF lists the best ways for schools to spend the premium in its Teaching and Learning Toolkit - a live resource updated with international research. About 60 per cent of schools use the toolkit, but the EEF says as pressure on budgets grows, there will be an even greater need to ensure schools use funding as effectively as they can to tackle the attainment gap.
Here are four evidence-based, low-cost interventions the EEF toolkit rates as highly effective for schools to invest resources in.
Feedback
Providing feedback to pupils gives them an average of eight months' progress over a year, according to the EEF toolkit. It says this method is about giving information to the pupil and/or teacher about their performance, and how they can improve their learning.
It helps refocus pupils' actions in the classroom towards achieving a goal, and involves them in their own learning. The EEF recommends the feedback is specifically targeted to the individual pupil, and focuses on challenging tasks, for it to be valued and taken on board.
The toolkit says effective feedback can be given by teachers or other pupils, and can be about the specific activity or how they manage their own learning. Evidence suggests feedback about a pupil's individual character, rather than the task, is the least effective.
Reading comprehension
Improving a child's comprehension through reading adds an average of five months onto a their education progress, and comes at a low cost. It also has 30 years of research behind the best ways to deliver it.
The method involves different approaches to improving pupils' reading focus and ability to understand meaning and context, identify key points, develop questioning strategies and monitor their own understanding. The EEF stresses the importance of consistency in delivering reading comprehension strategies, and the need to correctly identify the difficulty level of activities to provide, to improve the pupil's reading capabilities.
Self-regulation
The EEF describes this method as "learning to learn" and says its aim is to help pupils think more about what is required of them to do well. It can involve teaching pupils how to set out goals and evaluate their own progress, with support at first and then independently.
The toolkit recommends asking pupils how they can identify different ways to approach a task, and consider where it could go wrong and how they could avoid it doing so.
The EEF says these methods require careful implementation, but they can add eight months onto progress and are effective for older pupils who are struggling.
Peer tutoring
Peer tutoring is more effective and costs less than one-on-one tutoring, and it gives pupils an average of six months progress in one year.
There are a number of ways to approach peer tutoring, says the EEF, and pupils can work in pairs or small groups. For cross-age tutoring, it suggests an age gap of two years, and recommends intensive fourto 10-week blocks rather than longer programmes.
Research has found this method to be especially beneficial for disadvantaged pupils, and benefits both the tutor and the learner.
How pupil premium funds are being used
The most popular method is "programmes aimed at raising pupils' aspiration or confidence", which 79 per cent of schools have implemented. The EEF says there is not enough evidence to say how effective this approach is yet.
One-to-one tuition is used in 72 per cent of schools. This has been found to be highly effective, but is also high-cost.
Additional teaching assistants are being used by 71 per cent of schools, which the EEF says has a low effectiveness and a high cost.
Peer-to-peer tutoring schemes are only used in a quarter of schools, despite having a very low cost and high effectiveness.
Source: NAO research of 500 schools
