The pupil premium: assessing the options

The difficulties of judging what difference the Pupil Premium has made to school intakes and outcomes in England

“…Instead, the emphasis has tended to be on direct involvement in raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils, wherever they attend school. There were doubts originally about whether the premium was large enough to reduce any disincentive that schools may have for attracting lower attaining and disadvantaged pupils, and whether it could reduce social segregation between schools (Chowdry, Greaves, and Sibieta 2010). Radical changes to the intake of schools might also have been hindered by the Schools Admissions Code.…”

What the Minimum Income Standard Tells us About Living Standards in the United Kingdom

“…Research looking at the 'digital divide' and digital exclusion, which has found that children and young people from lower socioeconomic groups are less likely to have access to the internet, and are less likely to take up opportunities available online (Livingstone & Helsper, 2007;Chowdry, Greaves, & Sibieta, 2010), points to the importance of the inclusion of internet access for households with children as part of a minimum standard of living.…”

Reforming Education in England

“…Teachers are the most important resource in schools, with spending on teachers amounting to roughly 60% of total spending in English primary schools (Holmlund et al, 2009). Student teacher ratios seem to have a bigger impact on educational outcomes than general funding (Chowdry et al, 2010b). As the share of educational spending that goes to core activities (excluding transport, meals and housing) is lower in the United Kingdom than in any other OECD country (OECD, 2010b), reallocating resources towards teaching seems warranted.…”

“…The underperformance to a large extent reflects their weaker performance in secondary schooling. However, when controlling for this earlier performance, students from disadvantaged backgrounds do not seem to be underrepresented in higher education (Chowdry et al, 2010b). This puts the onus on improving earlier schooling experience for students from disadvantaged backgrounds.…”