Pupil Equity Funding: national operational guidance 2023

Impacts and Outcomes

At a school level, it is essential that headteachers continue to make best use of the data they have access to locally to understand which children and young people, affected by poverty-related barriers to learning, would benefit from targeted support and to monitor and track learners' progress over time. Schools should articulate clearly defined outcomes to enable progress and impact to be measured effectively. Where appropriate, consideration should be given to defining short, medium and long term outcomes to enable progress to be measured over time and to ensure that planned approaches are resulting in improvements. Improving nationally the confidence and accuracy of teacher professional judgement of achievement of Curriculum for Excellence levels is a key factor in measuring progress. Further guidance on assessment can be found in the Key messages for schools and the Benchmarks issued in 2017.

Progress towards closing the attainment gap will continue to be reported in the annual national and local National Improvement Framework evidence reports. There will be children and young people impacted by poverty where individual milestones will be more relevant to understanding the impact of supports funded through PEF. Special schools and mainstream schools with ASN provisions should contact their authority Attainment Advisor for further support if required.