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Find out how Children North East can help you to Poverty Proof the school day
What is Poverty Proofing?
Poverty Proofing the School Day is a project developed by Children North East. The project provides a toolkit to poverty proof the school day, to reduce stigma and remove barriers to learning and to assist schools in exploring the most effective way to spend pupil premium allocation. Poverty Proofing the School Day consists of an audit for each individual school, questioning pupils, staff, parents and governors. The result is an action plan tailored to each individual school to address any stigmatising policies or practices. There is then the opportunity to be awarded an accreditation following a review visit. We also offer training to staff and governors on poverty and its impact on education.
WHY POVERTY PROOFING?
We know that poverty is a strong predictor of educational attainment with more than 6 in 10 children on free school meals failing to secure 5 good GCSEs. Overall, this means a gap in outcomes of around 27% at Key Stage 4 between those pupils on Free School Meals and other pupils.
The unequal outcomes of English education reflect, to a large extent, the unequal outcomes in our society, but we still expect schools to ‘close the attainment gap’. We have very high hopes of our teachers to bring the best out of every pupil and yet the impact of poverty on children is not covered in any detail during a teachers own education and training.
Schools have been given the Pupil Premium to target support to children and young people, to improve outcomes. Schools are free to spend the funding in the best interests of children, but will be judged and held accountable for closing the gap. This has become an increasing priority of Oftsed inspections.
Children North East will help you to Poverty Proof the school day, developing a personalised action plan to help you address the issues and reduce this attainment gap.
Hope's Diary from Children North East on Vimeo.