The Education Through Regional Working (ERW) Scrutiny Councillor Group met on the 27 September 2016 and one of the issues they discussed was how each local authority scrutiny body challenges their schools and education department when looking at pupil deprivation grant spend on vulnerable learners.
The Group discussed a framework of ‘what works’ including looking at, for example, the attainment gap, tackling poverty and linking to the pupil deprivation grant.
From this session the Group identified a number of key questions that individual scrutiny bodies can ask when they speak to schools and their education department about this matter:
- What are you spending your Pupil Deprivation Grant (PDG) on?
- Has has it made a difference: is it working? Evidence of how?
- Why are you targeting monies on ‘…’ (is it a particular issue at you school)?
- How is your PDG spend linked to the priorities identified in your School Improvement Plan?
- Are you linking with other stakeholders like for example Health?
- Are you working across your cluster of schools to pool you PDG spend and deliver improvements more widely?
- How are you including/involving parents of vulnerable pupils (Free School Meal pupils eFSM)
- What are you doing to ensure positive aspirational attitudes in your school towards eFSM pupils?
- What are you doing around improving Continued Professional Development
- Are influencing initial teacher training around eFSM and the attainment gap?
The ERW region comprises of six local authorities and these include Carmarthenshire, Ceredigion, Pembrokeshire, Powys, Neath Port Talbot and Swansea. More information about ERW can be found here.
If you would like to find out more about Scrutiny you can visit our website here.
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