‘You can’t show impact with a new pair of shoes’: negotiating disadvantage through Pupil Premium

Abstract

is a doctoral researcher working in the School of Education and Lifelong Learning and the School of Politics, Philosophy and Language and Communication Studies at the University of East Anglia. He is currently pursuing research into the most recent reforms to English GCSE Literature and Language. He has a broader interest in education policy, policy enactment and aspects of poststructuralist discourse theory. 'You can't show impact with a new pair of shoes': negotiating disadvantage through Pupil Premium. The Pupil Premium policy was introduced in 2010 by the UK coalition government to tackle the attainment gap disproportionately affecting children from low-income families. Semi-structured interviews and policy documents are examined for the way the policy has been enacted in a single comprehensive secondary school in England. In 2014, this school had a lower population of Pupil Premium pupils (18%) compared to (29%) nationally and (25%) countywide. Despite this, the study provides evidence that the Pupil Premium has become invested within and gives rise to, a number of neoliberal techniques, technologies and practices. The study bridges insights from Mitchell Dean's (2010) 'analytics of government' and Ball et al's (2012) work on policy enactment to provide an in-depth, grounded analysis of the way the policy plays out within this school's context. It argues that the combination of national accountability measures used to show impact for Pupil Premium, and the school's ongoing struggle to raise overall attainment, leads school leaders and staff members to rethink the concept of disadvantage for their school population. This results in disadvantage being reconceptualised to fit a matrix of moral/pastoral obligations and efficiency/economic competitiveness, in which the tensions between these two orientations are uncomfortable and unresolved.

The Pupil Premium and policy transfer in English standalone and system leader multi-academy trust academies

“…Furthermore, schools seek other schools' practices to underpin their PP provision, whereby 74% of primary schools note this as a justification (Carpenter et al 2013). This concurs with Craske's (2018) qualitative study indicating one school visits Ofsted-rated Outstanding schools to develop their PP policies. However, schools' prior experiences of what works may be the most prevalent reasoning, as 98% of schools cite their internal monitoring and evaluation as informing PP provision (Carpenter et al 2013).…”

“…Furthermore, PP policies were explained as meeting school-specific needs, not only needs faced by disadvantaged children generally. This was often done by considering intersectionality in identities that can disadvantage children alongside economic deprivation (Crenshaw 1991), including their gender or English as an Additional Language status (Craske 2018), and having academic interventions to target this. 'Good' academies did this, which is significant considering Outstanding schools (Abbott, Middlewood, and Robinson 2015) and those with success in using PP funding adopt policies motivated by comprehending children's personal needs (Macleod et al 2015).…”

“…Relatedly, no research has investigated PP policy transfer. Yet as noted in the above review of PP research, Carpenter et al (2013) and Craske (2018) argue schools seek evidence from other schools, and the former and Macleod et al (2015) also affirm how learning from past provision is widespread. Hence this research will investigate PP policy transfer and the mechanisms through which it occurs, as previous literature indicates that spatial and temporal policy transfer could be significant PP policy justifications.…”

“…This emphasis is also driven by government accountability mechanisms regarding PP usage (Foster and Long 2018). as schools perceive it as simpler to measure academic interventions' success in closing attainment gaps (Craske 2018).…”

Assessing the impact of Pupil Premium funding on primary school segregation and attainment

“…Although the focus of this paper is on poverty, financial poverty is not the only kind of educational disadvantage (Craske 2018). And, as this paper shows, poverty is often linked to other indicators of possible disadvantage such as having a special educational need.…”