Headteacher engagement with Pupil Equity Funding: Autonomy,evidence and networks

Abstract

Pupil Equity Funding aims to address the poverty-related attainment gap in Scottish Schools. The current study examined headteachers’ choice of projects and interventions in their school, funded through Pupil Equity Funding, the key considerations and constraints affecting their choices, and the sources of support available to them. Eight secondary headteachers from government-funded schools across Scotland were interviewed. Using an interpretative phenomenological analysis approach, we identified three important themes: autonomy, engagement with evidence and the role of networks. Our findings suggest several challenges inherent in identifying both priorities and effective interventions to which funding could be allocated, as well as reflecting some of the creative and positive ways that schools have risen to these challenges. We discuss the complex relationship between external support and autonomy, and endorse an increased role for networks at local and national levels in the future enactment of Pupil Equity Funding.

Keywords

Attainment gap headteachers school leadership school-improvement evidence-based practice networks

Introduction

Globally, concerns have been raised about differences in the educational attainment of children depending on household income, with children from affluent backgrounds outperforming their peers from lower income backgrounds (Koza and Melis, 2017; Sirin, 2005; Von Stumm et al., 2020). Socioeconomic inequalities are directly linked to the prospects of school students and can result in a cycle of inequality (Brandt et al., 2012; Devlin, 2013; Sacker et al., 2002). In Scotland, where the present study was conducted, children from low-income households significantly underperform those from high-income households as early as age three (Bradshaw, 2011); a numeracy gap is clearly apparent by the time pupils are approximately eight years old and widens by early secondary school (Sosu and Ellis, 2014). Poverty-related attainment gaps are also present in other curriculum areas.

Variation in student achievement in Scotland is associated more with learners’ socio-economic status than with the quality of their schools and instruction (OECD, 2007). This poverty-related attainment gap and associated concerns about rising levels of child poverty have become powerful drivers of education reform in Scotland, with a plethora of policies and interventions being developed to tackle it (OECD, 2021). ‘Pupil Equity Funding’ (PEF; Scottish Government, 2019a) is a key example of one such intervention.

The first version of PEF was introduced in 2017 and since then, is allocated to nearly all primary, secondary and special schools in Scotland in amounts that equate to around £1000 per student (Wilson et al., 2020). The funding is allocated proportionally to the rate of free school meals (FSM) entitlement in the school (across early; primary through to the third year of secondary). It should be noted though that concerns have been raised about the reliability of FSM as a proxy indicator for poverty and its applicability to rural areas of Scotland (Chapman and Ainscow, 2019, 2022; Taylor, 2017).

In Scotland, local authorities (LAs) are responsible for all core school spending. In contrast, PEF is given directly from government to schools, bypassing LAs. The intended purpose of this additional funding is to pay for targeted interventions, approaches, and resources with the aim of boosting literacy, numeracy, and health and wellbeing of children and young people adversely affected by poverty (Scottish Government, 2019a). Operational guidance (Scottish Government, 2019a) outlines the following expectations for schools: there must be a ‘clear rationale’ for use of funding, based on a contextual analysis to identify the poverty related attainment gap in their schools; the selected intervention must be grounded in ‘evidence’; and plans must be in place at the outset to evaluate the impact of the funding. Little information is provided about what kind of evidence should be used, how it can be accessed and how impact can be evaluated.

Operational guidance for PEF is refreshed each year but has remained relatively consistent up to the release of the PEF 2023 guidance (Scottish Government, 2023a). Our data gathering was conducted in 2018–2019, and therefore relates predominantly to the first version; we address differences between these versions towards the end of this paper.

An initial review of its roll-out (Scottish Government, 2019b) suggested that headteachers felt confident in using data and evidence to inform the development of PEF plans and in measuring the impact of their decisions, however it is clear that they are referring to school-level data such as attainment and attendance data. Very little information is provided about the process of headteacher decision-making: how evidence was used to inform this process, and the extent to which headteachers engaged with research evidence other than what was available from existing school data.

PEF and school leader autonomy

Marking a distinct shift in the way that funding is provided to schools, the introduction of PEF is part of a wider governance reform agenda (Scottish Government, 2017) which positions schools as increasingly accountable for attainment, improvement and the reduction of the poverty-related attainment gap (Forde et al., 2022), while at the same time, purportedly empowering school leader decision-making and school autonomy (Scottish Government, 2019c).

Scotland is not alone in handing some decision-making power to school leaders; education systems across the world have witnessed a gradual shift towards increased school autonomy (OECD, 2012; Pont, 2020; Sahlberg, 2015), as part of a drive for school improvement. Although this can take many different forms, a general assumption, promoted globally (OECD, 2012), is that providing school leaders with the opportunity to make decisions that are more tailored to their context will lead to an improvement in standards.

In Scotland, proposals to increase school leader autonomy have been presented as part of an ‘empowerment agenda’ (Forde et al., 2021), with school empowerment promoted as integral to equity. An integral part of this agenda (Scottish Government, 2017), is an attempt to reshape the relationship between government, LAs and schools, to provide more flexibility to schools.

It could be suggested that PEF provides fertile grounds for improving school autonomy. However, greater autonomy often comes with greater accountability, and in education, this can lead to an increased focus on various forms of performance metrics (Sachs, 2016; Sahlberg, 2011; Sellar et al., 2017). Despite the attempt to increase school leader autonomy, LAs appear to have retained a degree of ‘instructional’ and ‘operational’ power (Wilkins and Olmedo, 2018: 7) in the enactment of PEF. The use of funding is monitored by the national school inspection, self-evaluation and planning processes that prevail in Scotland (e.g. Education Scotland, 2022). Additionally, there is an expectation that any reports on spending and impact will be publicly available to stakeholders. Thus, a range of measures are in place to incentivise schools to make and report evidence-informed financial decisions.

The extent to which schools are held accountable can vary depending on local context and the role that LAs choose to play. Chapman and Ainscow (2022) noted that in some LAs, schools’ plans had to be reviewed and approved by LA before funding could be spent, while others appeared to respect the ‘policy intention’ around the locus of decision-making being at the level of the school (p. 7). As such, flexibility around how PEF funding is used cannot be assumed, with some LAs reportedly controlling the process more tightly than others (Chapman and Ainscow, 2019).

In this complex funding and decision-making landscape, there is a need to better understand the decisions school leaders take as they try to use PEF to tackle the attainment gap. Research by Chapman and Ainscow (2019) found that school leaders had mixed feelings about the benefits of PEF. While some felt positively about receiving additional autonomy and responsibility, others raised concerns about their ability, and the system's capacity, to deliver on impact and value for money. It is therefore important to consider school leaders’ ability to engage with evidence, the sources they draw on, and the support that is available.

School leaders’ engagement with evidence

Researchers and governments are increasingly calling for more ‘evidence-based’ approaches to education (e.g. Coe et al., 2020; Rowe and Hattie, 2023). However, there is often a lack of clarity around what counts as high quality evidence, or appropriate sources of evidence. Roediger and Pyc (2012) argue that evidence-based classroom techniques can be low cost and high impact but are all too often overlooked in favour of expensive and less well-evidenced alternatives.

There is an increasing expectation that school leaders will use research evidence to inform and justify their funding decisions (Graves and Moore, 2018), and this is part of the discourse around PEF as noted earlier. For school leaders, using research to inform their choices presents two challenges: their own research literacy, and the accessibility of the evidence itself. Developing research literacy takes time, a resource that has been consistently highlighted as a key barrier to research engagement throughout the profession (Lowden et al., 2019; Magos, 2012; Mitton-Kükner, 2016; Thornley et al., 2004).

It is concerning that headteachers may be targeted by companies purporting to offer evidence-informed services but on a flawed basis. For example, the introduction of the Pupil Premium scheme in England (DfE, 2016) saw a sudden increase in the number of commercial and philanthropic enterprises approaching schools directly (Morris and Dobson, 2021), and similar trends have been identified in Scotland (Hutcheon, 2017). PEF has created a market where public, private and third-sector organisations compete for opportunities to reduce socioeconomic inequality (Chapman, 2019), with some arguably motivated more by profit than by student wellbeing. Headteachers require time and research literacy to scrutinise these offerings.

Education Scotland's online resource ‘Interventions for Equity’, first developed in 2018 (Education Scotland, 2023), provides examples of different interventions and programmes that other schools and LAs have used to address socioeconomic inequality. The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) ‘Learning and Teaching Toolkit’ is offered as part of this resource. The toolkit provides summaries of research evidence-based interventions for teachers to improve student attainment in ‘user-friendly language’ (Edovald and Nevill, 2021), though concerns have been raised about the extent to which this kind of evidence can be adapted to fit localised contexts (Biesta, 2007; Cain, 2017; Wrigley, 2018).

Schools may also turn to more local sources of evidence. Networking and collaboration between schools can have a positive impact on school improvement (Chapman, 2019; Chapman and Fullan, 2007; Muijs et al., 2010). However, this comes with certain risks; Graves and Moore (2018) found that school leaders placed more importance on the extent to which an intervention was seen to work in schools ‘down the road’ (p. 269), than on an examination of its research base. Some school leaders may aim to generate relevant evidence within their own centres, for example by carrying out or leading practitioner research. Overall, though, there remains a lack of clarity in terms of how headteachers access or develop, interpret and apply evidence when making funding decisions in relation to PEF.

Purpose and research aims

To date, little is known about school leaders’ engagement with evidence as part of the PEF process. Given the potential impact of school leaders’ PEF decisions, there is a need for research to address this gap. The present study aimed to uncover the experiences of headteachers as decision-makers as they interpret the purposes of PEF, select interventions on the basis of their chosen criteria, and then oversee the implementation of those interventions. We wanted to know more about the purpose and limitations of PEF as they see it, and how they evaluated its impact. We examined the factors that influence decisions including the information that headteachers access and data that they use, and any further support they perceive as necessary to help them make optimum decisions.

To pursue this, we conducted an interview study with eight current or recent secondary school headteachers, asking them to reflect on their experiences with PEF. This allowed the participants to explain from their own perspective how PEF had been implemented in their school. Unusually, the research was conceived as part of a school–university research collaboration, which we hoped would help to bridge the gap between university-led research and school practice.

The following research questions guided the study:

RQ1: How do school leaders perceive their own engagement with evidence when making decisions about PEF spending?

RQ2: What are school leaders’ experiences of autonomous decision making within the broader local and national structures that support PEF?

Methodology

Procedure

Data gathering was carried out using semi-structured interviews. The interview questions were designed collaboratively by the research team, which included school-based researchers, ensuring the relevance of questions.

The study employed interpretative phenomenological analysis (IPA), a method which is concerned with exploring participant responses in a way that allows them to explain experiences from their perspective (Smith et al. 1999). IPA recognises the interpretative role of the researcher in the process of reflecting the product of interaction between participant and interviewer, with experiences and their significance re-constructed in dialogue with the interviewer (Smith et al., 2022). Questions were therefore phrased more generally to promote reflection. The interview schedule consisted of 12 general questions, designed to tease out key ideas and let participants reflect on, explore and fully encapsulate experiences in their own words.

All interviews were held in the interviewee's own school, and took the form of either a face-to-face conversation with a researcher, held in private, or via telephone or video interview. This choice depended on what was most convenient for participants.

Participants

Participants consisted of eight secondary school leaders who were headteachers of secondary schools in receipt of PEF funding. This sample size is close to the ideal number suggested by Reid et al. (2005) for IPA, and we estimate that it represents approximately 2.5% of eligible secondary headteachers in Scotland.¹ Characteristics of participants, such as gender, ethnicity and stage of career have been omitted from this paper to protect anonymity. While our sample only captures a small percentage of headteachers, generalisability was never our aim, particularly given the complex ways in which schools and their contexts differ across the country. To be eligible for the interview, headteachers had to have been responsible for making decisions about PEF funding. We were aware that different issues may have arisen in different parts of the country. For this reason, we approached headteachers in a way that reflects diversity in terms of geographical location, rurality and experience. Headteachers were recruited through advertising the study using email invitations as well as direct communication via professional accounts on social media.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was obtained before data collection commenced from the Institute of Education Ethics Committee, University of Strathclyde, for this project.

Due to the high-profile nature of the PEF funding, participants were assured that any views expressed with respect to the funding, LA, or their own choices would be treated in strict confidence, and that their contributions would be pseudo-anonymised. For this reason, identifying information such as school roles and locations of schools have been removed from this paper. All participants were asked to provide informed consent to participation in the study, and an opportunity was given to withdraw afterwards; none chose to do so.

Approach to analysis

In using IPA, we aimed to elicit rich descriptions of participants’ experiences and the way they made sense of those experiences, and to analyse these sensitively and according to their original context. The analysis involved a movement from understanding individual experiences to finding commonalities across those experiences, and from describing to interpreting those experiences.

Initially, responses were categorised under a large set of tentative initial themes, each based on the researchers’ prior knowledge of the literature in this field and experience in schools. These headings were iteratively determined by discussion among the research team. Each interview transcript was coded by two members of the team, and the most relevant quotes were linked to one or more themes. Five subordinate themes were identified as follows: (1) autonomy and governance, (2) engagement with evidence, (3) role of networks, (4) conceptualisation of the attainment gap and (5) policy and staffing. This paper discusses findings related to the first three themes.

Findings

Autonomy and governance

As noted earlier, headteacher autonomy of decision making is a key driver of policy both for PEF and internationally. It might be assumed that headteachers would be uncomfortable with any encroachment on this autonomy, but we found some positive experiences of dialogue, debate and guidance. This was well exemplified by HT1:

And I think that partnership approach between the local authority and the schools was really, really helpful… putting your plan in, not for approval but for dialogue… almost like a critical friend type approach, which I found very, very helpful, just to have people saying ‘well why do you think that’ll make a difference? What's that about? Why that person?’ (HT1)

Headteachers were also clearly aware of the ‘menu’ of approved choices that was available centrally, through Interventions for Equity:

That was something that had been discussed at Education Scotland conferences…but it is on their websites as well. So, having been to conferences, we heard them speaking about that… If we are going to close the attainment gap and there is advice out there and support as to what makes the most difference, then that's the things we are going to look at. (HT2)

With respect to whether such top-down influence may undermine autonomy, participants viewed guidance at national level as too little rather than too much:

…sometimes that hands off approach can leave you a little uncertain about what you can and cannot do (HT7)

The Scottish government will give you an indicator that there's fifty-seven doing this numeracy and there's fifty-six doing this and this. But actually, what are they doing? … Are there key themes coming out? Could we share that? … If there's a PEF school that's been identified as doing a significant piece of work, could we have a couple of days where actually they host people? (HT3)

At LA level, experiences were more mixed. On occasion, LAs exercised a level of control over the process:

We got unanimous agreement that our plan was the way to go, I even brought in the attainment advisor from Education Scotland for my area, to have a look at my plans and so on. Council did kind of bite back on one particular element, and I was invited to go up and speak to the assistant director to state my case (HT4)

Some LAs were seen as providing invaluable guidance:

I’m lucky in this local authority, because people were quite aware of what was coming and have been really supportive as an authority… people early on were getting together, and there were three programs that they were supporting and saying, you know, ‘here's what we are suggesting that you could be doing’, you know, ‘pick what you want’ sort of thing. And then that's been really supported centrally in terms of the organisation. (HT5)

However, other participants described the role of LAs as heavily monitoring what was being done, thereby adding to workload and stress:

We were told that… this wouldn’t create a huge amount of work and it would allow schools to really make decisions which are best for their young people. But that's not really what's really what's happening, you know, it's been heavily monitored and policed and it's putting a ridiculous pressure on schools. (HT3)

Despite mixed feelings about the extent to which genuine autonomy could be realised, it was clear that headteachers embraced the responsibly this entailed:

And I suppose that having staked our claim to spending this money autonomously, we now seem to be in a position where we are… our professional judgement is being trusted on it. And we’re seeing good results (HT8)

What was really refreshing and liberating about it was it was the first time I’ve ever been given a significant amount of money where I could do - within reason - whatever I wanted. (HT4)

As a school we know our young people better than anybody and our parents know their young people better than even we do, so I’m not saying its daunting… but there is a responsibility to it to make sure that you are spending it wisely (HT2)

Others saw certain constraints and conditions as being unavoidable:

I do think there needs to be a level of oversight… with the best will in the world, you will get headteachers who can go maverick, or not be acting in the best interests of their school for whatever reason (HT4)

We are given autonomy in (area removed) to be creative but it's also about making sure that what we are doing is in line with expectations and good practice (HT2)

Overall, these quotes suggest that headteachers in our study fully appreciated the need to balance autonomy with constraints, including expectations from parents and the wider community, stakeholders and broader policy requirements. They also recognised that government bodies could provide support as well as limitations, and appeared to feel that the responsibility of engaging with evidence. One suggested that their own willingness to engage with evidence might not be typical for the sector:

Ultimately, I made the decisions for the school and I was very happy to do so. I know that not all colleagues were or felt able to… But see that wider research, I think that's incredibly difficult for people in schools to navigate. (HT1)

These findings suggest that autonomy and the application of evidence may at times be at odds, which raises a major question about the capacity of headteachers to engage as fully with the evidence as they might like to.

Engagement with evidence

It was apparent from the outset that headteachers interpreted the term ‘evidence’ broadly, including not just external academic research summaries, but also pupil data and other evidence gathered locally. The concept of using evidence was spoken about in a consistently positive way, for example:

I think schools have got much better about understanding that, you know, the research is really important… We weren’t using research in that way ten years ago at all, and we weren’t using data in the way that we use it now. (HT5)

When it came to specific funding choices aimed at tackling the attainment gap, the starting point for several headteachers was an analysis of needs within their own school:

I have my proposal here for the authority and it's really about our own data and…identifying what the needs were and putting a plan together that we feel was going to best address those particular areas. (HT2)

So my experience was thinking very carefully about, well where is the need? Let's not just set off and do things… Our plan was very much about identifying baseline issues, identifying starting points. (HT1)

I was adamant that we would understand what we were trying to close before we tried to close it …we were becoming more and more conscious of a group of sort of mid-teens, early-to mid-teen girls who were disengaged, self-harming… finding themselves isolated, socially isolated. So, yes, the self-evaluation process helped us see where problems were and the areas that PEF funding would address. (HT6)

Others discussed how they would use evidence to inform their decision making and reject interventions or ideas which were not evidence based. As one put it:

some people said ‘reduce class sizes’, and I went ‘right well I’m not going to do that because there's not a huge amount of research that says it makes that much difference’ (HT1)

Several headteachers commented on the risk of flawed strategies being pushed upon them, and it appears to be typical to receive multiple communications from external agencies offering services. Fortunately, many of the headteachers interviewed here appeared to set their priorities early, after which they looked for ways to implement these:

as a school we came up with–very early on–where we were going. (HT4)

It's about kinda cutting out the noise and focussing on what you are trying to do in (school) and the people who would be most effective in helping us bring that about. (HT2)

Several headteachers also expressed scepticism about the value of services from external agencies:

You’ve got to be very, very careful [about external organisations] but in fairness to the Scottish Government and to Education Scotland and to local authorities, the moment this programme was introduced that message was given out loud and clear. (HT3)

Some external organisations were viewed in a more positive light, with one headteacher suggesting that PEF has provided an opportunity to learn about other agencies that could benefit their school:

I found out about an agency that we hadn’t previously worked with that are doing almost family therapy work and young people befriending and we have engaged that organisation who are very professional on their own approach and are providing us with impact reports (HT2)

It is interesting to note this external agency's dual role in the PEF process: they provide an intervention, and measure its impact, thereby reducing the need for schools to collect their own impact data to feed back to the LA.

Most interviewees were also aware – at least to some extent – of the different ways of finding out about evidence-based practices for themselves. Nevertheless, their sources of information appeared to be quite restricted. A number commented very positively on the EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit. This guide – provided by Education Scotland as part of ‘Interventions for Equity’ – was considered helpful and user-friendly:

So it's the stuff from the Education Endowment Foundation, the two top-rated things that make the biggest impact, that's where that's all coming from… I think it gives you enough information to feel confident about it”. (HT5)

…the Education Endowment Foundation, the Interventions for Equity from Education Scotland, they were pretty high profile so you could get to them no bother (HT1)

…the Education [Endowment] website and the Toolkit for what makes greatest impact, so having a look at that and just researching what made the difference or what had the greatest impact….

Headteachers also discussed being able to then adapt these identified interventions ‘to our own school and our needs’ (HT2).

Engagement with evidence more directly through academic journals was seen as too time consuming to be viable:

I don’t think people, with the best will in the world, have got the time to do that… there's just so much stuff out there… I think that's incredibly difficult for people in schools to navigate. (HT1)

These findings suggest strongly that these headteachers were aware of the value of finding interventions that have a strong evidence base, had some idea of how to access this evidence, and were able to be sceptical regarding the offers of third-party organisations. Our sample did appear, however, to be reliant on a restricted range of sources of evidence, in particular the EEF toolkit/Interventions for Equity. Some headteachers referred to the need to adapt recommendations to their local context, but otherwise there was a lack of critical discussion about how and when interventions can be applied.

Finally, some participants spoke positively of the long-term impact on staff of engaging with evidence-based interventions via PEF:

I’ve already had conversations around well what happens when PEF stops… What have you got left? You’ve got really skilled-up staff. That's got to be our priority. (HT5)

Role of networks

Given the difficulties of selecting interventions and engaging with evidence independently, there would appear to be a place for network-based approaches. There was an appetite among our participants for engaging with fellow schools and finding out what had proved successful elsewhere:

I think it would be helpful to get information on what other schools are doing. Almost like a catalogue of - if you are interested in this, this is where you should go to see it in action. (HT4)

LAs were referred to as a potential forum for practical advice – for example, sharing ideas and setting up systems for sharing professional dialogue and information. While this appears to be happening, some participants want more of this:

everything we do in [area] is shared widely so we know as a city where we’re at (HT2)

Getting us together as HTs…in focus groups, in clusters…but also in sectors… helping to support what kind of improvement plan document we would be writing up (HT4)

Dialogue with families, staff and fellow school leaders appears to be playing a critical role in decision-making around PEF. HT7 spoke of workshops being created with their extended school leadership team. HT4 consulted with peers and with the LA attainment advisor then had a ‘consultation with…representatives of every stakeholder’. This included the school pupil council.

HT8 commented on the benefits of being part of a ‘group of headteachers’ as ‘it gives me a different perspective’. HT2 also stressed the benefits of ‘listening and working with another headteacher colleague’. This headteacher emphasised that it ‘…wasn’t me who made the decision on my own. It was a collective decision with all our stakeholders’.

HT 1 also spoke including both staff and parents in decision-making:

I was quite clear that I was going to lead it, but I was going to engage with as many people as I could in doing that.. a combination of talking to parents, talking to teachers, parent council, doing a whole load of research with our parents to say ‘is that something you would want, and if so what would it look like for you?’ (HT1)

Overall, though, it appeared to be networks of fellow schools, particularly within LAs, which were most influential, and sometimes this was reflected in shared decision making and joint funding of specific projects:

We certainly approached it at a cluster level, if you do that then suddenly your money goes from fifteen thousand to a hundred thousand, and then we can use that to work with the authority to say ‘well look, if we’re doing this what are you doing?’ (HT6)

One of the key successes of [programme] was the networks that were created. So, there's not that much new out there, to be perfectly honest, so if you’re looking at an intervention there's a fair chance somebody else is doing something in another school… So, it's really just about identifying something that, you know, is working elsewhere and then seeing whether it works for you. (HT3)

These data suggest that networks were active and influential. In contrast, the link between schools and universities was viewed as not ‘as fully developed as it could be’ (HT1), though the same participant had used university contacts as consultants. Overall, it was a minority of participants who spoke about university contacts at all.

A final consideration to emerge is that the strong reliance on local networks and in-school consultation appeared to supersede evidence in some cases, with headteachers deriving a sense of ‘what works’ on the basis of what was recommended by others:

…we’re going to be talking to that other school over there that has already used this, and if they think it's good’. So, a lot of the stuff that we, in that sense we had endorsements from other schools that we knew. (HT5)

This view might be shaped by their capacity to independently engage with evidence:

I’m not an expert in research… I do sometimes go in and I read the actual analysis and everything [but] I’m going to take it at face value, because a) I don’t have time to delve into it in great detail, but also I’m just trusting that it is. (HT5)

Overall, the enthusiasm of our participants for working with fellow school leaders suggest that networks have potential to address some of the difficulties around engaging with evidence, and in a way that does not necessarily undermine their autonomy.

Discussion and conclusion

The study is among the first to examine experiences of school leaders’ enactment of PEF. The debate around school autonomy is growing, and it is important to inform it with insights into headteachers’ experiences of policy enactment. The current findings raise some important issues about the way that headteachers engage with evidence when making decisions about how to allocate PEF funding, which we will now address.

Analysis of findings

It was clear from our data that headteachers value the ability to make decisions at school level, and were able to talk in detail about the needs of their pupils and of the local area. They also took on board and appeared to relish a new sense of autonomy and responsibility that came with PEF, with the experience described by one as ‘refreshing and liberating’.

Autonomy is never without its constraints, however, and headteachers expressed the need to navigate multiple pressures and priorities within their own institutions, including staff suggestions and parental input. However, while LA processes were sometimes seen as burdensome and time consuming, participants were not, overall, negative about input into their decision-making process. In line with the points about research above, participants welcomed guidance, discussion and new ideas. Overall, this suggests that autonomy in the context of policy enactment is a complex concept, which can be restricted, shaped or supported by a range of multiple factors.

Our findings also suggest that there is a keen awareness of the need to base programmes funded by PEF on a solid grounding of research evidence, and of the importance of evaluating those programmes objectively. In some cases, such an approach was required by the participant's LA, and the guidelines for PEF funding also require headteachers to audit and evaluate their own funding choices. However, there was little sense that research engagement was a tokenistic exercise among our participants. A number of headteachers spoke eloquently of the need to establish baseline measures in a way that reflected their understanding of the norms of quantitative educational research. They were enthusiastic about engaging with sources of research evidence, and aware of the need to be sceptical about the motivations of external agencies and products.

However, there was also a clear sense that headteachers did not always feel they had sufficient research knowledge to make decisions autonomously, and some spoke of the impossibility of finding time to read up on the research alongside their other duties, and of taking research at face value. This connects with the points made earlier about the importance of time as a resource, and its connection to headteachers’ application of research skills. Along with headteachers’ appreciation of the importance of both evidence to inform choices and later evaluation of interventions, there was a strong desire for more support. This included calls for more (and more specific) input on the national level, and perhaps from universities too.

Engagement with menus of evidence-based practices such as that provided with Interventions for Equity may, at first glance, appear to solve this conflict between a desire for evidence-based strategies and a lack of time and resources. However, such shortcuts raise certain problematic questions around autonomy. Why, for example, should we expect autonomous decisions to be taken by headteachers if they lack the time and resources to do this effectively? And more broadly, if headteachers are drawing on decisions and evidence reviews conducted by others, should there be more scrutiny around where they get information from, and who provides it? The promise of freedom to choose that is built into PEF policy may be illusory without a reliable evidence base for the choices to be made, and support for the development of headteachers’ research literacy and criticality.

In this context, LAs appear to be playing a role in the guidance and oversight of PEF school spending. It was clear from our data that LAs can also provide a network within which school leaders can collaborate, sharing both ideas and the burden of decision making. Some spending decisions were made collectively, rather than on a single school basis. The most positive comments focused on LA-based networks of fellow leaders, which allowed headteachers to learn from the experiences of others. Staff, parent or pupil groups were also important networks that influenced school leaders’ thinking about priorities.

The role of networks comes with certain challenges, however. There could also be a concern that too much direct sharing from one school to another could provide a fertile ground for educational ‘fads’ that lack a sound evidence base. Reliance on networks can also lead to inequalities; one urban headteacher spoke of partnerships with more than one local university, but such opportunities may be more difficult for rural or remote–rural schools to establish. These are challenges for Scottish education to be aware of and confront honestly if a network approach to evidence-based leadership is to be successful.

Given that headteachers do not appear to see networks as a threat to their autonomous decision making but rather as a source of support, it is curious that relatively little was said about school-based practitioner enquiry. Given the hundreds of professionals working in every school (and the thousands at LA level), it is likely that at least some have the experience, skills and desire to carry out or collaborate on enquiry or research on a local level. This would appear to be an underused network at present, and perhaps reflect some limitations in terms of how school leaders, LAs and wider governance structures in Scottish education conceptualise what counts as ‘evidence’. The recently published ‘School Research Plan 2023 to 2026’ (Scottish Government, 2023b) seems to reinforce this narrow view.

PEF: where are we now?

This study was conducted before the Scottish Government's announcement of their commitment to a continuation of PEF funding over a four-year period (2022–2023 to 2025–2026; Scottish Government, 2022a) and the introduction of revised guidance (Scottish Government, 2023a). PEF is now presented as part of the government's strategy to support recovery from the pandemic and tackle increasing levels of child poverty, and is positioned alongside ‘Best Start, Bright Futures’ (Scottish Government, 2022b), which sets out ambitious plans to eradicate child poverty by 2030.

This indicates an elevation of PEF within policy discourse, from assisting in closing the poverty-related attainment gap, to playing a fundamental role in eradicating poverty. The most recent version of National Operational Guidance (Scottish Government, 2023a) highlights a further change: increased flexibility in who can benefit from the funding. While PEF is still calculated based on FSM registration, school leaders are asked to use their ‘professional judgement to identify children in their school who may benefit from the targeted interventions and approaches’ (p. 3). The renewed purpose of the policy is broader, indicating an awareness that poverty impacts a wider group of children than FSM eligibility measures successfully capture. However, there is a risk of losing clarity in terms of the purpose of PEF among broader policy developments, as has been observed with the Pupil Premium (Morris and Dobson, 2021).

Schools are also encouraged to make use of attainment advisors and organisations in their wider professional networks, including Educational Psychology Services to develop PEF approaches (Education Scotland, 2022). While such measures seek to provide more guidance, they may suffer from the same tensions highlighted in our findings between sources of evidence and school leader autonomy. However, it must be noted that the continuation of PEF after 2026 is yet to be confirmed.

Concluding thoughts: the role of school-university partnerships

In the current study, we found that there was a hunger for guidance and support in accessing and critically engaging with different forms of evidence. On the same theme, there was a recognition that more time, skills and expert input would be valuable, while network-based support was widely seen as a more viable source of information about research evidence than individual scholarship or top-down mandates.

It is therefore worth noting that school-university partnerships were seen as underdeveloped by headteachers in our study. On the face of it, universities are an obvious channel to support research engagement, and have the potential to tackle some of the issues raised, including supporting sustainable networks, building research competence, criticality regarding interventions, and guiding the gathering and evaluation of evidence in schools (BERA, 2014).

Ironically, the present project was derived from a school-university partnership in which the research team consisted of a mix of school-based teacher researchers and university-based researchers, and therefore reflects an intersection of shared priorities. University-based researchers can benefit from such collaborations due to the insights that working with school staff affords, as well as facilitating access to and understanding of schools, while teachers (i.e. ‘school-based researchers’) can develop their research understanding and skills, enhancing practice and/or leadership potential. Following reflection on the research project within the school-university partnership research team, we conclude that collaborative education research, as demonstrated by our experiences in working together in this project, has the potential to be highly sensitive to local needs, and its outcomes could also inform school leader decision-making. There is scope, then, for future projects that would be of mutual benefit to the sectors, and which could help to advance the aims of PEF and similar programmes of education reform.

Footnotes

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the wider School-University Partnership in Education (SURE) research group, which included Dr Edward Sosu, Dr Markus Klein and Dr Farid Bardid, all based at the University of Strathclyde, and classroom teachers working within secondary schools in Scotland.

Consent for publication

Informed consent for publication was provided by participants.

Consent to participate

Informed consent to participate was provided in a written format.

Declaration of conflicting interests

The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Ethical considerations

Ethical approval was granted by the Institute of Education Ethics Committee, University of Strathclyde, for this project.

Funding

The authors received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

ORCID iD

Anna Beck

Notes

Author biographies

Jonathan Firth is a Senior Teaching Fellow at the Institute of Education, University of Strathclyde, Scotland, UK. The main focus of his research is the application of cognitive psychology to education. Before this, he worked as a secondary teacher and in adult learning.

Anna Beck is a Senior Lecturer in Education at the School of Social and Environmental Sustainability, University of Glasgow, Dumfries, UK. Her research explores policy-making processes, education reform and teachers’ roles as policy actors.

Claire Wilson is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at the School of Education and Social Science, University of the West of Scotland, UK. Her research interests relate to educational and developmental psychology with a focus on inequalities, diversity, and inclusion.

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