The kinds of poverty in schools and their impact on student progress

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There is already considerable evidence that the nature of school intakes matters. Schools vary in terms of the proportion of pupils with learning challenges or from disadvantaged backgrounds, for example. And this affects the resources required by each school, the progress that can be expected in terms of pupil attainment, and even pupils' sense of society and what would be an appropriate future for them. This new research is based on consideration of a newly constructed indicator of disadvantage at school, using it for a new approach to make considerations of school intakes both more accurate and fairer for all concerned. The research questions are:1) What is the pattern of pupil FSM 'trajectories' over their school careers? What are the characteristics of pupils who enter and leave FSM eligibility compared to those who remain eligible throughout their school life, those who have never been eligible, and those who are missing FSM data at some stage? 2) What difference does including the pupil FSM trajectories make to the apparent patterns of segregation between school intakes? Are permanently eligible or missing-FSM pupils clustered in particular areas, types of schools or schools?3) What are the patterns of attainment of pupils with different FSM trajectories? What are the implications of this analysis for instruments of policy such as the Pupil Premium gap?4) What difference does including the FSM trajectories make to school average progress scores? Would instruments of school performance policy, such as progress scores, be fairer given more detail about the more precise level of relative disadvantage in school intakes?The results will be relevant for policy and practice in England, especially concerning attempts to reduce or overcome the poverty gradient in school attainment and subsequent educational participation. This study also contributes to important theoretical issues, and creates new knowledge about school systems and their performance. The study will use ESRC-supported existing official datasets to describe, better than in previous accounts, the changing nature of intakes to schools, and the link between pupil intake characteristics and subsequent attainment/participation. Previous studies and official accounts use FSM-eligibility as a binary (Y/N) variable, as opposed to the finer grainedvariable to be used for these new calculations. The focus will be on secondary state-funded mainstream schools in the National Pupil Database, following cohorts from 2003/4 onwards from their primary schools to Year 11, looking at pupils moving in and out of eligibility for free school meals (FSM), and those missing relevant data. It will collate the other characteristics and the outcomes for these different patterns of pupil FSM 'trajectories', and recalculate existing and published indices of FSM segregration between schools, school types, and regions. It will use all of these results to create statistical models to assess the extent to which consideration of these different categories of pupils living in poverty - such as never eligible, recently became FSM, previously FSM, moving in and out of FSM-eligibility, and missing relevant data - changes our understanding of how serious FSM segregation between schools is, what impacts it has, what causes it, and how it relates to attainment and pupil progress.Instruments of school performance policy, such as progress scores, may not be fair in the absence of more detail about the more precise level of relative disadvantage in school intakes, as will be provided by this study and its consideration of 'trajectories' of FSM-eligiblity over time and their interaction with other pupil background characteristics. Also policies such as the pupil premium can be made more efficient and effective, by directing extra funding to where it is most needed. The project will contribute to a better education system, a more efficient use of taxpayer-funding and a fairer society