Analysis of Children & Young People's Plans

This NFER paper follows similar reports in recent years which summarises the main trends emerging from Local Authorities (LAs) Children and Young People's plans. This analysis is based on a representative sample of 50 LA plans.

Key points:
- Current priorities to LAs are commissioning, safeguarding and looked after children. The plans format and presentation was also analysed.
- On commissioning: half of LAs referred to commissioning, with a big focus on the development of a commissioning strategy since 2006. Where joint commissioning teams where mentioned they mostly referred to Primary Care Trusts and Council or LA teams. Most were commissioning by service, whilst some are commissioning by ECM area. CAMHS is the priority area for joint commissioning and looked after children are the priority group.
- On safeguarding: the priorities were child protection, closely followed by violence and abuse with all LAs reporting they had a Local Safeguarding Children's Board in place.
- On looked after children: the priority was on ensuring participation of looked after children in service planning and reviews; improving placement quality, stability and choice; educational attainment and improving health. With regards ECM the focus was on "staying safe" and "enjoy and achieve".
- Format and presentation (this analysis relates to 106 plans): plans are either highly designed or mainly word-processed (about half each). The average length has grown by an additional 22 pages to 74 pages since 2006, but there is wide variation in the length of plans. 69% of plans used pictures etc. (I think this is enough on this here, if you want more read the report).

Movements between employment and child poverty

This study uses longitudinal data from the Families and Children Study to explore the impact of movements in and out of paid employment on the economic circumstances of families with children. It also looks at the circumstances of families that receive in-work tax credits to investigate how their economic circumstances change following employment transitions.

Key points:
- 53% of lone parent families and 94% of couple families had at least one parent who worked for 16 or more hours per week. 5% lone parents worked for less than 16 hours per week. Couple families were more likely to be dual earners than sole earners. In sole-earner couple families the father was more likely to be in work than the mother. Only 5% couple families had neither parent in work for any hours per week.
- 65% of working lone parent families were in receipt of Working Tax Credit (WTC). One quarter of single-earner couple families and one in ten dual-earner couple families were receiving WTC. On average lone parent families received £101 in tax credits (£58 WTC and £43 Child Tax Credit (CTC)). Sole-earning couple families received a similar amount to lone parent families (£56 WTC and £42 CTC), and dual-earning couple families received a lower amount (£30 WTC and £35 CTC).
- In 2005 18% families with children were living in income poverty.
- Family work status has a clear relationship with income poverty. More than half of families that did not have a parent who worked for at least 16 hours per week were in income poverty. There were very few dual-earning couple families in income poverty. However, having just one parent who works for 16 or more hours per week does not guarantee that the family will avoid income poverty. 13% working lone parent families were in income poverty, as were 15% of couple families where just one parent worked for 16 or more hours per week.
- Following a transition into work, a substantial proportion (70%) of families had moved out of income poverty a year later, and this figure was the same for lone parent and couple families. Lone-parent families who received in-work tax credits had higher income poverty exit rates after one year than couple families who received them (75% 62% respectively exited poverty). Rates of income poverty exit improved further for families that remained in work for a further year – 77% of lone parent families and 78% of couple families had escaped income poverty two years after finding and remaining in work.
- Movements in and out of work were the key factors associated with changes in income poverty and hardship status over time. Other factors were also associated with these changes, including family size, ethnicity, and tenure.

Good practice in literacy and numeracy

This paper by PwC for the Northern Irish Education Department to examine good practice in literacy and numeracy by looking at Irish and British cities.

Key points:
Respondents thought that reasons for the ‘long tail’ of underachievement in Northern Ireland included:
- A lack of parental involvement in their children’s education;
- A perceived lack of value placed on education in certain areas, particularly deprived Protestant areas;
- A shortage of positive role models;
- The impact of ‘The Troubles’;
- A decline in the readiness for schooling of pupils entering primary school in recent years (e.g. in terms of behaviour, linguistic development etc);
- A lack of baseline data on young children, hindering early intervention in schools;
- The transition between pre-school and primary and between primary and post-primary schools; and
- A lack of strategic direction and consistency of approach at the system level.

Measures to improve boys’ performance were identified at the individual level, the pedagogical level, the school level and at a system-wide level.
These include:
- Mentoring;
- Target-setting and more personalised learning;
- Introducing greater variety in teaching styles and activities;
- Creating an ethos of high expectations and aspirations throughout the school;
- Using data effectively to identify areas of difficulty;
- Developing appropriate professional development for teachers; and
- Disseminating good practice.

Respondents also raised concerns about:
- The weight given to teaching literacy and numeracy in Initial Teacher Training (ITT), particularly for those planning to teach in post-primary schools;
- The level of support for special educational needs;
- Resources for literacy and numeracy (including the layout of school buildings); and
- The need for strong strategic leadership across the sector.

Effective schools and school systems are characterised by:
- Strong leadership and strategic vision;
- A focus on learning and development for all staff;
- Close linkages with parents and the wider community;
- An emphasis on personalised learning, tailored to the needs of the individual pupil;
- Creativity and making learning fun;
- Collaboration with other schools, particularly at transition stages; and
- The effective use of data.

Northern Ireland: closing the gap

This strategy paper by the Department for Education (Northern Ireland) provides a useful summary of the successes and failures of this education system in raising standards, especially of certain groups of students who tend to consistently under-achieve in numeracy and literacy.

The paper summarises research (national and international) which informs the strategy:
- Targeting the allocation of resources in favour of children and schools in socially deprived areas and highlighted the positive contribution of Reading Recovery as an effective mechanism in improving standards in literacy was recommended.
- Teachers should have suitable initial and subsequent training in numeracy, as well as sound subject-specific knowledge and recommended that pupils should experience a wider and more challenging range of learning opportunities, including mental calculation in a range of contexts, tasks requiring strategic thinking, higher-order questioning, collaborative problem-solving, and increased use of ICT.
- The teaching is most effective when it is interactive and contingent on the pupils’ responses, includes collaborative activities, encourages discussion, involves problem-solving and investigative work, and links the learning with other subjects, including the use of authentic problems.
- The indications are that far more attention needs to be given, right from the start, to promoting speaking and listening skills to make sure that children build a good stock of words, learn to listen attentively and speak clearly and confidently. Speaking and listening, together with reading and writing, are prime communication skills that are central to children’s intellectual, social and emotional development. All these skills are drawn upon and promoted by high quality, systematic phonic work.
- High and lower-attaining children in year 2 who had access to linguistic phonics outperformed other children in year 2 who did not participate in the programme.
- A systematic approach to phonics at an early stage is more effective than later less systematic phonics and that a phonics approach corresponded well with the emphasis in the revised curriculum on enriching the children’s learning environment and learning experiences through activities such as learning through structured play at the Foundation Stage.
- The impact of socio-economic disadvantage on levels of attainment in literacy and numeracy, and on educational standards generally, is highlighted consistently in research fi ndings and specifi cally in a report commissioned by DE on Barriers to Recognising the Benefits of Education. That report recommended the further development of extended schools to establish the school as a hub for multi-agency services to support families and encourage educational involvement.

Improving outcomes for low-achieving students

This report by HM Inspectors (Scotland), visited a number of schools that were making a significant difference for lower-achieving groups of pupils, often in less advantaged communities to find out what these schools had in common and what good practice could be found and shared.

Key points:
- Inspectors found common characteristics of effective practice in raising achievement for the lowest attaining 20% of pupils. The characteristics of effective practice which make a difference to young people’s lives by improving their literacy and numeracy skills are not new or innovative. They are characteristics that should be present in every school, in every class, and in every lesson.

- In particular, they relate to:
• the quality of relationships between staff and pupils
• consistently high expectations
• opportunities to work collaboratively
• well designed opportunities for pupils to be actively involved in learning and to contribute to discussions
• the commitment to a shared vision of how to improve the quality of pupils’ learning
• effective use of self-evaluation for improvement
• valuing and empowering staff, pupils and parents in order that they can work together to improve learning
• creating a climate of ambition and high aspiration for all
• ensuring that the school has a clear framework for teaching literacy and numeracy.

A useful document for leaders and teachers interested in classroom practice.

Expenditure and attainment at primary school

This report by the LSE for the DCSF examined whether the dramatic increase in school expenditure in the last 10 years has led to increased pupil outcomes at primary school.

Context:
In much of the academic literature, it has proved difficult to find any positive relationship between school resources and academic outcomes, mainly because of the funding mechanism that exists for schools in England. Local authority grants for education are determined as a basic per pupil amount plus supplements for measures of social deprivation and additional educational needs. Local authorities in turn allocate funding to schools by a formula, which is largely driven by the number of pupils but also gives additional funding for pupils from socially disadvantaged backgrounds or with special educational needs. Pupils with these characteristics achieve, on average, lower results and hence the funding mechanism may introduce a negative correlation between resources and pupils’ performance; schools with more resources perform worse on average.

Key points:
- An increase of £1,000 in average expenditure per pupil (roughly an additional third of current expenditure) implies an average improvement in attainment corresponding to 4.3, 3.5 and 1.9 percent of a level in these subjects (key stage 2 levels).
- It seems to be easier to translate expenditure increases into improvement in Key Stage 2 attainment for English in more disadvantaged schools (compared to less advantaged schools), whereas the opposite is true for Science. For Maths, the effect of expenditure is higher in more advantaged schools, but the differential between school types is not as high as for the other subjects.
- Pupils eligible to receive Free School Meals do seem to benefit more on average from increases in expenditure in terms of attainment in English and Maths. There is less of a differential for Science.
- There is a stronger effect of expenditure on higher ability pupils (on the basis of their Key Stage 1 assessment) across all subjects.
- It would appear that spending on staff (teachers, support staff and other staff) are driving the overall effect. Learning resources are also potentially important for raising attainment in English and Science.
- We conclude that the increases in expenditure probably have been cost effective. To evaluate this fully, future work should investigate whether the effects of increasing expenditure in primary school persist and are evident for pupils when they undertake assessments in secondary school.