Pupil Equity Funding: national operational guidance 2023

Resources

There is a package of national and local support available to assist schools in planning how to use their Pupil Equity Funding.

The Education Scotland report 'Pupil Equity Funding: Looking inwards, outwards, forwards – sharing effective practice to maximise support for learners and practitioners' provides a valuable resource highlighting effective practice in planning and implementing PEF approaches.

Scottish Attainment Challenge – Self-evaluation resource designed to assist schools and others bring about further improvement at this time of recovery.

An Interventions for Equity framework of evidenced and proven educational interventions and strategies to help tackle the poverty related attainment gap. The framework can be used by all stakeholders and should help to inform the decisions schools make. The structure and content is designed to be dynamic and continues to evolve as an integral part of the National Improvement Hub, where a wide range of improvement, self-evaluation and research materials are available and where PEF practice exemplars can be shared. Other research summaries and intervention examples will continue to be incorporated as these become available.

Scotland's Equity Toolkit: supporting recovery and accelerating progress is for all stakeholders who are involved in delivering the Scottish Attainment Challenge. It brings together, in one place, a wealth of guidance, professional learning materials and practice examples focused on key themes and approaches central to achieving the SAC mission.

ILA Framework to evaluate how well local authorities are improving learning, raising attainment and closing the poverty related attainment gap

A reflective tool for educators, Getting It Right For All Learners during COVID-19

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) Toolkit provides an accessible summary of educational research designed to inform discussions on the most effective approaches to improving attainment, with a focus on 5-16 year olds and poverty disadvantage. It contains teaching approaches and interventions, each summarised in terms of their average impact on attainment, the strength of the evidence supporting them and their cost. It is useful for education leaders and practitioners to inform decision making on the use of Pupil Equity Funding, raising attainment and improving equity. Many of the strands now include challenge questions to help support professional discussions. The toolkit is intended to be used in conjunction with the range of interventions and approaches provided through the framework above to encourage and enhance professional dialogue taking full account of the local context.

The Attainment Scotland Fund invests in a suite of national programmes delivered through third sector and other partner organisations to enhance supports across the system. Each of the four programmes deliver multiple projects in supporting a range of national initiatives such as showcasing youth work’s role in closing the attainment gap, work to address costs of the school day, capturing young people’s views and supporting the virtual school headteacher network. More information can be found below regarding a small selection of each of the projects:

YouthLink Scotland has a range of support available for schools as part of their Scottish Attainment Challenge national programme https://www.youthlink.scot/education-skills/

More information on Young Scot’s Participatory Budgeting Voting platform can be found here: https://youngscot.net/participatory-budgetingvoting

CPAG Scotland’s recently published Cost of the School Day Ideas Bank resource, showcases what schools around the country are doing to reduce costs and make sure everyone can fully take part in their school day.

More information on the CELCIS resource showcasing the work of Virtual School Headteacher Network in Scotland can be found here:- https://www.celcis.org/our-work/key-areas/ education/virtual-school-head-teachers

Guidance on working with the third sector is available to help support schools make the best use of funding with other partners. This resource sets out how schools can create purposeful partnerships with appropriate third sector organisations to improve outcomes for children, young people and families. The third sector is particularly well placed to support improvements to health and wellbeing and to improve employability skills and school leaver destinations.

Alongside schools, youth work improves the wellbeing, readiness to learn and educational outcomes of children and young people. Youth workers support learners in schools and in the wider community. YouthLink Scotland has a range of support available for schools as part of their Scottish Attainment Challenge national programme. This includes advice on using PEF to improve attainment and achievement through youth work, resources to measure impact and case studies highlighting the impact of effective youth work and school partnerships. For more information speak to your Attainment Advisor or get in touch using email.

Attainment Advisors will provide advice on a local and regional basis. Attainment Advisors can be integral to facilitating good communication between headteachers, helping to share best practice and provide guidance on effective planning, implementation and evaluation of interventions in schools, local authorities and Regional Improvement Collaboratives.

Examples of this include Attainment Advisors:

• working with headteachers, senior leaders and practitioners to support joint planning and development of collaborative approaches to the use of Pupil Equity Funding
• providing advice and support to Headteachers on planning and reporting on initiatives and the use of impact evaluation data and evidence to identify successful approaches and areas for improvement
• supporting review of local authority SAC self-evaluation frameworks and approaches and providing advice on how this could be expanded to include work related to Pupil Equity Funding and wider Attainment Scotland Funding, including Strategic Equity Funding and Care Experienced Children and Young People Funding.
• highlighting opportunities for collaboration and use of communication tools on Glow including the Scottish Attainment Challenge community, Teams, Yammer, Sharepoint, and Blogs.

These tools all ensure educators can have online discussions, ask questions, post responses, exchange ideas, access additional resource materials and share examples of practice across the Scottish Attainment Challenge, with the ability to host regular discussions and securely connect and network practitioners where required.

Guidance on School Improvement Planning including Standards and Quality reporting from Education Scotland. Local authorities will also offer their own packages of support for schools to help them plan how to use the funding effectively.

• More guidance can be found for Primary schools and early learning and childcare here: https://education.gov.scot/media/0qid0vsw/ data-guide-primary-and-elc.pdf
• Secondary schools guidance is here: https://education.gov.scot/media/ca3c2gki/ data-guide-secondary.pdf Scottish Government, June 2023