Case Study – Godstone Primary and Nursery School

The context of the school shows that there are increasing numbers of children on roll who are eligible for the Pupil Premium (17.2% in 2020 / 23.7% in 2023), an increase in mobility, and that the disadvantaged and those with SEND achieved lower attainment and progress scores when compared to their peers.

Parental surveys suggest high levels of satisfaction in provision, but returns were low at 37%, with the families of the disadvantaged and those with SEND being significantly underrepresented.

School leaders formed the hypothesis that comparatively poor outcomes for the disadvantaged and those with SEND may be contingent partly on the challenges around the engagement of the families of these students.

Domain of the Surrey Inclusion Framework Tool 9 (Working with learners’ families) was used to identify the school’s strengths and highlight ways of improving outcomes for all children and closing the gap for disadvantaged children through improved family engagement.

Before employing the framework and engaging in the assessment process, students and parents worked collaboratively with senior leaders and other school staff to adapt some of the framework’s language to ensure that questions were accessible, and that terminology was viewed as ‘friendly’.

A wide range of stakeholders was engaged in the implementation of the framework, including senior leaders, school staff, the parents of students who were eligible for the Pupil Premium and those with SEND, and the parents of students who did not fall into these groups.

The breadth of participating stakeholders means that the analysis of data is more complex than when working with a smaller, narrower cohort, with responses needing to be considered overall, at individual question level and by stakeholder groups. Nonetheless, the process has helped the school to focus of key issues arising from the survey and has, of itself, necessitated the participation of some who might not otherwise have engaged.

Strengths and development areas are being shared with parents, the school council, and staff, who are working together to plan for greater engagement of families.

The Inclusion Framework will be reapplied evaluate the success of the project and to plan for its next phase.