Understanding our disadvantaged pupils’ needs
- cathypotter100
- Nov 10
- 5 min read
In order to have a successful approach to securing strong outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, it is important for schools first to consider what we mean by disadvantage. ‘What do you do for your disadvantaged pupils?’ is a question that can drive schools towards mechanistic approaches such as ‘We mark their books first’ rather than approaches with a strong evidence base. This is often because school leaders have not had sufficient time and space to consider what disadvantage is and what exactly it is we are trying to affect.
What do we mean by disadvantage?
In our eagerness to close the attainment gap, schools can find it hard to invest significant time really understanding the issues which underpin underachievement. Whilst we can’t sit on our hands and not take action, poorly defined issues will only result in ineffective activity.
Even worse, without exploring these issues properly, staff often fall into thinking traps relying on heuristics and bias, concluding that pupils are not motivated or that families don’t value education. Not only are these statements full of prejudice, deficit thinking and othering, they also are not things we can take any action on! The position that pupils and families are problems to be fixed is a defensive position which disempowers everyone.
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Engaging staff teams in a whole school definition of educational disadvantage
It can be helpful to engage staff teams in creating a whole school definition of disadvantage.
Roughly one third of pupils who are living in poverty are not ‘poor enough’ to be eligible for free school meals, meaning that the Pupil Premium label is an imperfect measure of disadvantage [3]. Staff may be unaware that the Pupil Premium encompasses Looked After, Previously Looked After and Service Children. Add into the mix that many pupils who attract Pupil Premium funding are educationally and socially excelling. You've come full circle. You realise this is not a homogenous ‘group’. There is not a special kind of learner called a 'PP learner'.
What is the solution to getting lost under a pile of labels which don’t feel actionable? Frame the problem you are trying to affect in educational terms.
One example is a school which has defined their ‘disadvantaged pupils’ as 'any pupil who is at risk of underachievement'. Another school I know has found it useful to think about pupils experiencing ‘educational disadvantages’ and ‘social emotional disadvantages’. Greenshaw High School’s Focus Five approach is helpful here [4].
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Needs led rather than label led
The EEF’s guide to the Pupil Premium’s section on diagnosing your pupils’ needs frames this thinking really well:
Gaining a thorough knowledge of your disadvantaged pupils’ levels of attainment and engagement with learning is the first step to develop an effective Pupil Premium strategy.
Engaging staff teams in observing pupils in the classroom can give insight when framed using lines of enquiry such as:
Are there educational challenges for this child in this lesson due to poor prior knowledge?
Are there educational challenges for this child in this lesson due to their understanding of words?
Are there educational challenges for this child in this lesson due to their reading fluency?
Are there educational challenges for this child because of their attention to learning?
Are there educational challenges for this child because of their confidence in speaking?
Not all pupils from low-income families will experience these challenges, but where these areas are weaker, being a confident learner with a strong sense of self-agency becomes so much harder. When we address these areas, we improve pupils as learners.
Turn challenges into teacher actions
Crucially, these challenges then have to be turned into teacher actions (rather than being seen as problems within the child). Teachers and Support Staff must understand that addressing disadvantage is about us getting better at what we do in the classroom, in alignment with each other as a staff team.
Educational challenge: | Potential solutions for whole class learning: |
As a learner, I’m on the back foot because I don’t have the prior knowledge for this lesson | Engage teachers with front loading lessons with teaching the prior knowledge required |
As a learner, I’m a bit disengaged because you are using a lot of words I don’t understand | Engage teachers with thinking around ‘the curse of the expert’ Consider whole school training and approaches around high quality interactions, language development, oracy, vocabulary instruction and reading |
As a learner, I’m finding the lesson hard to follow because I don’t have sufficient reading fluency - I’m overloaded | Consider whole school approaches to teaching of reading Robust monitoring of reading interventions |
As a learner, I haven’t been ‘coached for the classroom’. I don’t instinctively know where to put my attention. | Explicitly teach and rehearse behaviours which support learning Engage staff in training on harnessing attention |
As a learner, I find it hard to talk in class about my thinking with confidence | Consider how every moment in a school day potentially helps develop language (interactions, stories, vocabulary teaching, reading, phonics, high quality interactions) Question whether it is possible for a pupil to pass a whole lesson (or even day) without speaking |
These educational challenges above underline how hard it is to observe learning - that it is largely invisible, taking place within the brain. So methods by which practitioners elicit evidence of learning - checks for understanding and checks for listening - underpin how well we get to know the learning needs of our pupils.
By tightly focusing on these educational challenges, staff can be united to address areas within their gift. By becoming more responsive to less visible barriers to learning, staff can feel empowered to affect a greater difference. As Ofsted outlines:
leaders understand that the most effective inclusion strategy begins with everyday high quality inclusive teaching, which has most benefit for the pupils who find learning hardest and reduces the need for individual adaptations [5]
As Marc Rowland puts it:
We need to properly understand the impact of disadvantage on learning. Poorly identified need leads to poorly identified activity, which leads to weaker results and initiative fatigue. [6]
If we don’t properly understand the educational disadvantages we are trying to affect, we are vulnerable to lowering our expectations for certain pupils based on unconscious bias. If we frame our thinking in terms of educational disadvantage, it is much easier to focus on what lies within our gift.
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Rowland M (2021) Addressing Educational Disadvantage in Schools and Colleges The Essex Way John Catt p49
Bibliography:
Evidence for:
Impact of low income on learning:
Sense of alienation from education:
Jackson, B. & Marsden, D. (1966). Education and the Working Class. London: Penguin Books
Reay, D. (2017). Miseducation: Inequality, education and the working classes. London: Policy Press.
Beliefs about their own abilities:
Henry, L. (2015). The effects of ability grouping on the learning of children from low income homes: a systematic review. The STeP Journal, 2(3), 79-87.
Chowdry, H., Crawford, C., & Goodman, A. (2010). The role of attitudes and behaviours in explaining socio-economic differences in attainment at age 16. Longitudinal and Life Course Studies, 2(1), 59-76.
Education Endowment Foundation. (2013). The impact of non-cognitive skills on outcomes for young people. London: Gutman, L., & Schoon, I.
Oral language / vocab development:
