Alun Rees Learning Limited [email protected] Oxfordshire Virtual School for Looked After...

Alun Rees Learning [email protected]

Oxfordshire Virtual School for Looked After Children

“Walk in my shoes” Conference, October 2015

Dr Alun ReesFormer Virtual School Head & Consultant, University of Oxford, Department of [email protected]

Supporting our most vulnerable students – why looked after children

in particular?

mailto:[email protected]


Aims

• What does impact look like and how can you ensure that the strategies you adopt are likely to have impact?

• How can you link evaluation of Pupil Premium Plus spending to improvement planning and inspection preparation?

• How can record keeping make assessing impact simpler?

• Which are the key relationships to cultivate and how do you ensure you have the information you need when you need it?


Why this group?

• Looked after children are:– among the lowest achieving groups at age 16

– at significant risk of offending, sexual exploitation, drug and alcohol abuse, and having their own children taken into care

– taken into care because we think that we, the ‘corporate parent’, can do a better job than their birth parents

– a specific focus for Ofsted inspection of schools and local authorities

• Designated teacher, social workers and carers are the people who are likely to make the biggest differences to their lives


Track and Monitor: is this rocket science?

How is the child doing?

Is that good enough?

What do you do about it?


• ‘Tracking Pupil Premium’– Google offers 65,000 options

• ‘Tracking spreadsheets’– 6,000 examples

• ‘Tracking grids’– 5,000 examples

Track and Monitor: is this rocket science?


Features of a tracking system

• Easy to use and integrated into normal practice

• Visual prompts

• Aggregates individual data into analysis of cohort or intervention

• Aggregates individual data into a budget/spend model

• Easily exportable into other packages for further analysis/presentation

• Capable of producing simple descriptions of what you are doing and its impact for the website


The key questions





Theory underlying this approach

• Measure is too low

• Research says ‘X’ works

• Apply the research

• Expect results

• Accept that there will always be some kids for whom it doesn’t work – no intervention is perfect

• Examine the cases where the intervention doesn’t work …


Try to understand ‘why’

• ‘Literacy is stuck’

• Why?– Cognitive issues?

– Gaps in earlier learning?

– Something else?

• If the intervention is designed to provide effective ‘catch-up’ why should it work identically for every child?


Which measure?

• It depends …– Is there an interim measure that could indicate progress on the way to

literacy improvement?

• Emotional health & well-being?

• Home circumstances?

• How does understanding of individual needs - rather than performance against a particular measure - influence the use of pupil premium plus in your school?– How you answer that question will influence the sophistication of the

tracking systems you adopt


How often?

• It depends …

– Literacy?

– Emotional health & well-being?

– Home circumstances?

– Attendance?


Tracking the journey …

• The literacy measure is a final outcome

• There could be numerous interim outcomes on the way to improving literacy

• Does your intervention create the scaffolding necessary to enable the child to improve

• If you can’t demonstrate the instant impact of your intervention to Ofsted could you demonstrate the journey towards it

• Do you have a clear ‘narrative’ for Pupil Premium Plus that everyone understands and can explain to Ofsted?



• How regular a comparison of current actual with expected?– Tracking without levels?

– Fisher Family Trust or other predictive methods?

– High expectations?


What will you do about it?

• Which intervention?– Informed by evidence?

– Validated?

– By whom?

• How will it be delivered?– Who, when, how often?

– Quality of delivery?


What should you believe?• ‘Best Buy’

– Randomly Controlled Trial (RCT)– Comparison with robustly constructed

control group– Systematic review– Statistical correlation • ‘Worth looking at’

– Validated local practice

– Promising local practice

– Emerging local practice• ‘Don’t buy’

– Blog posts and twitter feeds …


• Exclusion = disrupted learning

• Disrupted learning …

= less progress

= damaged relationships

= inspection risk

• Make sure that school inclusion strategies work hand-in-hand with the pupil premium and looked after children strategies

Pupil Premium Plus and inclusion


Is it ‘what’, or ‘how’?

• Could the impact claimed depend on how the intervention is applied? Fidelity of approach?

• Consider how to use the suggestions, evaluate their effectiveness yourself, and modify them (or not)

• Knowing an interventions has had a positive effect doesn’t mean you can just take it off the shelf – challenge your thinking


Could it be ‘who with’ as much as ‘what’?

Whole system leadership happens as networks of relationships form among people who discover they have a common cause and vision of what’s possible

Harvard University Centre for Public Leadership


Making change happen

punitive

TOauthoritarian

permissive

FORpaternalistic

DON’TACT

Increasing Support (encouragement/nurture etc.)

Incr

easi

ng C

ontr

ol (r

igor

/dis

cipl

ine

etc.

)

Doesn’t deliver

sustainable change, only temporary

improvement

Clearly unacceptable

RESTORATIVE

WITHAUTHORITATIVE

WorkingWITH someone

delivers effective, lasting, change

Develops dependency rather than

lasting change


Track & MonitorHow is the

child doing?

Is that good

enough?

What do you do

about it?


EvaluateHow is the child doing

NOW?



Cost-effective?

Cost?

Alun Rees Learning [email protected] [email protected] 23

http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evaluation/diy-evaluation-guide/



Alun Rees Learning [email protected] [email protected] 24


ANDIs that good

enough?

What willyou do

about it?How is the child doing

NOW?

What did it cost? AND

Is it cost-effective?


An effective Pupil Premium Plus Strategy?

• The gold standard of effectiveness …– Ofsted say it is effective

• The silver standard– Children (and their outcomes) tell Ofsted it is effective

• The bronze standard– Parents/carers tell Ofsted it is effective

• The paper standard– You say it is effective

• What evidence will you collect to demonstrate effectiveness?


Aims

• What does impact look like and how can you ensure that the strategies you adopt are likely to have impact?

• How can you link evaluation of Pupil Premium Plus spending to improvement planning and inspection preparation?

• How can record keeping make assessing impact simpler?

• Which are the key relationships to cultivate and how do you ensure you have the information you need when you need it?


Identify best practice and use it

• Professional networks– bring designated teachers together with social workers and

carers and establish a joint learning enterprise; talk to your teaching school alliance

• The DIY Evaluation Toolkit – Bring rigour to decisions about what to do and the

evaluation of how it worked

• The Virtual School Handbook– http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/resources/

http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/resources/

http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/resources/


The REES CENTRE• Express interest in being involved in future possible

research projects;

• Come along to lectures, seminars/webinars;

• Join the Rees Centre mailing list and receive newsletters 5 times/year: [email protected]

• Web: http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/;

• Comment on the Centre blog – or write for us;

• Follow us on Twitter: @ReesCentre

mailto:[email protected]

http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/

http://reescentre.education.ox.ac.uk/


Thank you

Alun Rees Learning Limited [email protected] Oxfordshire Virtual School for Looked After...

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