The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium

Published

Step 1: Diagnose your pupils needs

It’s important to know and understand your whole school context – including individual pupil and family needs.

Build a shared understanding of the strengths and needs of your socio-economically disadvantaged children. It’s only when you know your context well that you can make a positive difference to pupils.

Step 1 can support you in developing the ‘challenges’ section of DfE’s Pupil Premium strategy template, ensuring your intended outcomes are clearly set out.

If the challenges are not clearly understood, the subsequent activities are likely to be muddled and lacking precision.

Phil Stock

Director, Greenshaw Research School

Put it into practice

Spend sufficient time building a shared understanding by working together.

Gaining a thorough knowledge of your disadvantaged pupils’ levels of attainment and engagement with learning is the first step to develop an effective Pupil Premium strategy.

Sharing values around the unique strengths and needs of your pupils will unite your school community around what is being put in place to support the children in your setting.

Begin with a thorough exploration of the challenges disadvantaged pupils face in your context. Avoid generalisations by diagnosing the specific needs of your pupils — what's true in one setting may not be in another. A precise understanding helps ensure support is well targeted and meaningful.

Stella Jones

Director, Town End Research School

Gather and reflect on a wide range of information to build a rich picture.

Initially, this is likely to involve comparing outcomes for disadvantaged pupils against broad national benchmarks, such as:

  • attendance data and levels of persistent absence;
  • attainment data;
  • suspensions and exclusions data.

This high level analysis should then be followed by a more detailed exploration to identify specific barriers to learning. Doing so will help you understand what may be hindering the progress of pupils working below age-related expectation or high prior attainers who are underachieving. This data might include:

  • reviews of pupil learning;
  • teacher feedback on pupils’ levels of engagement and participation;
  • behaviour data;
  • internal absence from lessons;
  • pupil and family feedback: strengths and challenges;
  • information on wellbeing, mental health, and safeguarding; and
  • information on access to technology and curricular materials.

By moving beyond labels to truly understand the educational challenges our disadvantaged pupils face, we can unite our staff teams around actionable, classroom-based solutions. This focused approach ensures that addressing disadvantage becomes embedded in our everyday teaching practice, rather than relying on ​‘add-on’ initiatives. When we turn challenges into teacher actions, we create the conditions for all pupils to thrive.

Cathy Potter

Assistant Director, East London Research School

This video explores the wide range of data that can be used to inform decisions.

Video length: 01:45

Take action

Do adopt a detailed approach to identifying your pupils’ needs. Our Explore framework tool—which accompanies the School’s Guide to Implementation guidance report—can support.

Don’t cherry pick data that confirms ‘hunches’ you may already have.

Do consider the strengths and needs of all socio-economically disadvantaged children, including high prior attainers.

Don’t focus solely on pupils who are working below age-related expectations.

Do examine the data carefully to work out the root causes – e.g. school attendance.

Don't focus on the visible effects of a problem; identify the underlying causes of the challenge.