Cost of the School Day Toolkit, Scotland: step five - regularly revisit your action plan

This toolkit helps your school take action on poverty to make sure all children and young people are included. You’ll find key information, experience and practice from a range of settings, and resources to get everybody talking about the Cost of the School Day.

Now that your school community has taken action to reduce and remove costs, you can start to assess how well the changes you’ve made are working.

In step five you will be asking:

  • Are the children and young people in your school community able to engage more fully in the school day?
  • Has the stress of extra costs been reduced or removed for parents and carers?

Cost of the School Day is an ongoing process - regularly revisiting your plan helps everyone to see where actions are working and where they need tweaked to work better. Your working group should meet at agreed points to review how things are going. It’s also good to keep talking to your school community and seeking their views, experiences and solutions.

On this page:

Self evaluation

The resources in this toolkit can help you evaluate how well your school is addressing the impact of poverty on children’s wellbeing, learning and achievement. Use them to assess whether:

  • Children from low income households have equal access to the curriculum and resources for learning
  • There is an inclusive school culture and ethos where discrimination is challenged
  • Staff and learners have a good awareness of poverty
  • Children and families on low incomes are able to participate in the life of the school

It’s important to regularly revisit your Cost of the School Day plan. Build review dates into your plan to help to keep the action plan fresh in people’s minds. When you meet it’s useful to ask:

  • How are we doing?
  • How do we know?
  • What are we going to do now?

Lots of answers to these questions might be clear from the data you have already collected, for example, has attendance at a club improved or has the number of young people registered for free school meals increased? However you may need to check some other things again through surveys discussions, or other means You can use the resources in this toolkit to do this.

Sketchnote showing Cost of the School Day practice at Glenrothes High School

Sketchnote showing effective Cost of the School Day practice identified by HM Inspectors at Glenrothes High School in Fife

Schools and local authorities review and adapt their approaches to costs associated with the school day. For example, removing additional charges for curriculum subjects, sensitivity around fundraising and minimising events such as non-uniform days. Self-evaluation around Cost of the School Day is a key part of wider self-evaluation for equity. Education Scotland’s Scottish Attainment Challenge self-evaluation resource sets out features of highly effective practice and challenge questions for schools, local authorities and regional improvement collaboratives on the themes of leadership, learning and teaching and families and communities, including Cost of the School Day. How could you use the resources in this toolkit to help you answer some of these questions?

Extract from Education Scotland Scottish Attainment Challenge self evaluation resource

Challenge questions

For schools and in classrooms:

  • Do our school policies help ensure that we have reduced the barriers which could prevent children and young people from taking part in their education?
  • How well do our staff and partners respond to the needs of children and families facing financial barriers to learning?
  • Do all staff have a good understanding of the need to ensure that the cost of the school day does not exclude young people from opportunities at our school?
  • Do staff ensure resources for planned, progressive learning activities are accessible to all?
  • How well do we engage with children, parents and partners when reviewing the cost of the school day? To what extent do we involve them in making financial decisions?
  • Have we planned to support families with fuel, food or data poverty issues?
  • How do we plan to show the impact of our interventions and approaches?
  • How well are we tracking and monitoring our progress and ensuring equity? 

For local authorities:

  • How well are we supporting and empowering schools to mitigate the cost of the school day?
  • To what extent do our local authority policies help to reduce additional barriers that could prevent children and young people from participating in all aspects of their education?
  • What policy and procedures do we have in place to ensure any that pupil can access their learning digitally, if they are learning at home?
  • Are we providing additional resources or support to schools to help them address the cost of the school day? How effective is this support?

The impact that Cost of the School Day can have

We know that poverty isn’t going to be fixed overnight and that the challenges children and families face are often complicated. We know that investing in our social security system to maximise family incomes is the most effective way to help children get on at school.

However, we also know that schools can and do make changes which have a significant impact on young people’s ability to fully engage with learning, and that the simplest solutions can make a huge difference to how children and young people feel about their time at school. Removing cost barriers means the richest experiences are possible for all children and young people.

Young people and their teachers talk about the difference taking a Cost of the School Day approach has made in their schools

Free eLearning course

Our free elearning course explores how school communities can reduce and remove the financial barriers to education for children and young people from low-income families. It’s suitable for anyone working in or alongside schools, with an interest in reducing costs to families and supporting learners.

“It was all a real eye opener, especially the high percentages of young people in poverty and challenges the schools face to help support these families.” 

Teacher

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