Pupil Premium: An intervention epidemic?

Physician Martin Fischer (1879-1962) said that “diagnosis is not the end, but the beginning of practice”.

In the term of school improvement plans and target-setting, it is timely to look at how school leaders identify and select priorities for their schools.

Too often the approach to this “appears to resemble a group of doctors trying to treat a patient’s condition without an accurate thermometer or access to the latest medical research” (AEE, 2017).

This is hardly surprising, particularly for schools and leadership teams in challenging circumstances where the pressure to deliver quick remedies and sticking plaster treatments are prescient.

So how do leaders set about diagnosis in these circumstances? Quite often, due to the national or regional landscape, the agreed narrative is the starting point – the targets need to be around engaging White British boys, stretching high-attaining students or narrowing the Pupil Premium gap. A pressurised leadership team in an Ofsted category looking to move quickly naturally grabs hold of ideological solutions to these nationally recognised problems.