NFER Teacher Voice Omnibus 2012 Survey: The use of the Pupil Premium
31 July 2012
The Sutton Trust submitted 13 questions in the Teacher Voice omnibus in February 2012. This report forms part of the output from the omnibus survey, concerning specifically the questions over the use of the Pupil Premium in schools. A sample of over 1600 teachers completed the survey. The questions asked teachers (both primary and secondary) about the Pupil Premium and the top three priorities for extra spending at their school. Teachers were given a list of options to choose from.
Key Findings
- Early intervention schemes, reducing class sizes, more one-to-one tuition and additional teaching assistants in the school were the most frequently cited priorities for the Pupil Premium.
- However, 28 per cent of teachers did not know what the top priority for the Pupil Premium spending was in their school
- More than half (52%) of the teachers said their school uses past experience of what works to decide which approaches and programmes to adopt to improve pupils' learning. Just over a third (36%) said their school looks at research evidence on the impact of different approaches and programmes.
- Large proportions of teachers indicated that their school uses informal methods of evaluating approaches and programmes. These include trial-and-error approaches and learning from the experiences of other schools. While a large proportion of teachers believed that decisions in their school are based on research evidence, it is unclear what evidence they are using.