“Education and training is at the centre of every child’s future”

Dr Thomas Barnardo (circa 1868)

Key Proposition

“Barnardo’s, through working together with schools, can even

more effectively improve the achievement and life opportunities of vulnerable and disadvantaged

children and young people.”

Barnardo’s positioning

As an organisation which works to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children, Barnardo’s shares and welcomes the Government’s vision to promote fairness, reduce child poverty and improve social mobility by intervening early into family and childhood difficulties. This vision is underpinned by an aspiration to narrow the gap between poor children and their better-off classmates in educational opportunity and outcomes.

A.A. Milne highlights a problem

“Here is Edward Bear, coming downstairs now, bump, bump, bump, on the back of his head, behind Christopher Robin. It is, as far as he knows, the only way of coming downstairs, but sometimes he feels that there really is another way, if only he could stop bumping for amoment and think of it”

Pupil Premium

• Introduced in ‘10/’11. Brain-child of Nick Clegg. Focus- To narrow the attainment gap between rich and poor children.

• Funding ‘13/’14. Primary -£953, Secondary-£900. ‘14/’15. Primary-£1,300, Secondary-£935, Looked After Children £1,900.

• Total Bill £2.5 billion p.a.

Deprivation vs. Attainment

Cost/Impact of PPInitiative Cost Level of usage AdvanceFeedback ££ *** 8 months

Peer Tutoring ££ **** 6 months

Early Years Intervention

£££££ **** 6 months

One to One tuition ££££ **** 5 months

Collaborative Learning

£ **** 5 months

Small group tuition

£££ ** 5 months

Behaviour Interventions

£££ **** 4 months

Parental Involvement

£££ *** 4 months

Reduce Class sizes £££££ *** 3 months

Summer Schools £££ ** 3 months

Cost/Impact of PPInitiative Cost Level of Usage Advance

Teaching Assistants

££££ *** 0 months

Performance Pay ££ * 0 months

School Uniform £ * 0 months

School Environment

££ * 0 months

Ability grouping £ *** -1 month

Repeating a Year £££££ **** -4 months

Impact to date- Demos• Most recent GCSE year 72 of 152 LAs saw

an increase in the gap as poorer pupils fell behind their classmates from more affluent backgrounds.

• In 66 LAs the gap was larger than 2 years ago.

• Across England the GCSE gap was 26.7%, up from 26.4% in ‘11/’12, but reduced from 27.5% in ‘10/’11.

• A reduction of 0.8% at a cost of ?????• London skews the data further.

Devon - Report of the Head of Service for Education and Learning (published Jan. ‘14)

• There is a significant gap in achievement between children in receipt of FSMs and their peers.

• In 2013 the gap between the attainment of children aged 11 achieving Level 4 in reading writing and maths was 21%. The gap in attainment is closing compared to performance in previous years but only slowly.

• By age 16 the gap in performance widens. For example, in 2012 the Devon gap for 5+ A*-C including Eng/maths was 28%. This attainment gap has remained approximately the same for the previous three years.

Headline- last Friday.

• Michael Gove states “Schools should be engines of social mobility”

• Association of School and College Leaders responded indicating that “there is only so much that schools can do about social mobility. Schools cannot crack this alone”

Equality and focus• To date schools could be accused of using

their additional targeted funding to “chase targets” in terms of tackling the “softer issues” in order to please OfSTED. e.g. attendance, persistent absence and A-C grades.

• If we are to hold true to “every child matters” principles then every child’s attendance and progress matters, including the most intractable cases.

Aim of Barnardo’s when working with Schools

• Ready to Engage• Ready to Learn• Ready to Progress• Ready to Attain• Ready to Employ• Ready to enjoy a life as responsible

and fulfilled adults

Attendance at School –Impetus for change

Evidence is clear:•The most deprived primary school children are nearly 4 times as likely to be persistently absent than the least deprived.•Primary school pupils on FSM are more than twice as likely to be persistent absentees.

Attendance at School

Impetus for changeEvidence is clear:

•3.6% (126,230) of primary school pupils were Persistently Absent in 12/13. This is 0.2% higher than 11/12.•Nearly half of the above were FSM pupils.

Attendance at School –

Impetus for changeEvidence is clear:

• 2% of 4 yr olds and 6% of 3 yr olds did not take advantage of their entitlement to funded early education places in ’12.• This constitutes 53,500 children• For the most deprived quartile participation is very low• Black African, Pakistani & Bangladeshi are the least likely to attend.

Prioritise

• Issues of poor attendance and progress are central to the generation of what Michael Gove describes as an “educational underclass”, Michael Wilshaw “a two nation Britain” and Charlie Taylor defines as “outside the mainstream educational world”

• This week OECD research suggests that the most disadvantaged pupils in Shanghai match the maths test results of the most wealthy pupils in UK

• “This debunks the myth that poverty is destiny”

OfSTED FrameworkIssues of

Accountability “Poverty, background, vulnerability or disadvantage do not have to be predictors of failure” “Vulnerable and disadvantaged children should be able to make at least the same levels of progress as their more advantaged peers” Sir Michael Wilshaw, Chief Inspector, OfSTED

A key premise

A child’s progress within the classroom is closely bound up with their lives outside of the school.Disadvantage and vulnerability have a strong bearing upon a child’s ability to access and exploit educational opportunities as enjoyed by their more advantaged peers.

Under the radar

Some children’s lives are characterised by fear, rejection, turbulence and chaos.

• UPN challenges• Violent partners• Family members behind bars• Children who have never attended

school• Fostered/LAC moved from place to place

leading to discontinuity of education

The changing nature of schools

• Poor attendance and behaviour of young children at school is often a product of inter-generational worklessness, abuse, neglect, addiction and a whole raft of other issues that schools are not traditionally funded and skilled to deal with.

• These are specialist tasks which schools may wish to commission from providers such as Barnardo’s.

We are working towards children being

seen to be at the centre of a

constellation of services

commissioned by HTs.Increasingly HTs are

adopting a “Civic Leadership” role alongside other

services, taking a more holistic view of the

community that they serve and how they can

provide a Learning Community

Barnardo’s offer to Schools

• Alternative curricula for classroom use e.g. PATHS (promoting alternative thinking strategies) SEBD support in mainstream classes, Roots of empathy

• Therapeutic activities e.g. pyramid clubs, nurture groups, TAMHS (targeted mental health services)

• Home/School Connect incl. Family Support Workers

• Parenting Support e.g. Incredible years• Mentoring Schemes and Peer Mediation• A large pool of trained volunteers across the UK

Using the Pupil Premium to best effect.

“Children’s lives are continuous even though their education is not” (Oscar Wilde)

•School Cluster Support•Offers support to families at all ages and stages•Real support at times of high vulnerability e.g. points of transition•Continuity of support •Barnardo’s seen as neutral whilst still working with the school.

Outcomes of School Cluster work

Barnardo’s independent evaluation leads us to believe that our interventions can lead to:•71% improvement in attendance•55% reduction in poor behaviour referrals•43% improvement in attainment

Bespoke Support

Why is the issue of attendance and progress so important?

What are the consequences of us continuing to fail some of

our most vulnerable children?

Mikaeel Kular- Jan. 2014He had not returned to the nursery after the Christmas break because his mother said he had been ill.

Daniel Pelka- Sept. 2013A boy of four was allowed to be tortured to death because teachers and support agencies failed to ‘think the unthinkable’. A review found Daniel was effectively ‘invisible’ to officials….

Hamzah Khan- Oct. 2013 The mother’s refusal to let the PC see her son, who the officer knew had not been attending school, was the final straw.

How many more serious case reviews do we need before we get it right???