How do schools justify funding? Mapping research evidence use in Pupil Premium strategies at primary schools in England

Abstract

In England, schools receive additional annual funding in proportion to the number of disadvantaged students that they enrol. This Pupil Premium funding is allocated by schools to help overcome educational disadvantage. According to Department for Education regulations, schools must report the evidence underpinning their spending allocations, and publish these strategies online. This pilot study examines how 900 primary schools in England used research evidence to justify Pupil Premium spending decisions. Schools were randomly sampled across economic regions (100 per region), and strategy documents were collected from school websites using web scraping. Automated text analysis identified funded interventions and types of evidence cited, followed by rapid reviews to assess the evidence trustworthiness. Most schools (84%) used the Department for Education's recommended template. Of the 685 records that referenced branded interventions, only 10% cited specific institutional evidence, 63% made reference to generic Education Endowment Foundation guidance, and 26% provided no evidence. Even where ‘evidence’ was cited, it was too often inappropriately evidence of ineffectiveness, or merely a plan to evaluate the intervention. Even among the five most popular programmes, only two had supporting evidence, while three had limited or no evidence. The study demonstrates how automated analysis of publicly available school policy documents can be used to examine evidence use at scale in education systems. It also highlights that school published statements to justify funding are often broad, indirect, and not programme‐ or evidence‐specific. The paper recommends better presentation of evidence bases to help schools in this difficult area.