Spending the pupil premium : what influences leaders’ decision-making?

Introduced in England in 2011, the pupil premium policy was an ambitious reform aimed at tackling the persistent attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their more affluent peers. The policy provides school leaders with the professional autonomy to determine how pupil premium funding should be used. This article examines the decision-making processes and influences involved in the use of these additional resources. We conducted interviews with 21 school leaders from different contexts across the Midlands in order to investigate the approaches, perceptions and experiences that influenced their engagement with the pupil premium policy. The findings highlight the range of strategies employed to determine how the funding should be used and the factors that influence the decisions made. Our data also indicate the tensions and challenges that are experienced by school leaders in relation to effective use of the funding. We conclude with recommendations for policymakers and practitioners in relation to the requirement for high-quality, accessible information to support pupil premium use, the role of accountability mechanisms and the need for wider societal reform in order to tackle social disadvantage

Detecting abnormal events on binary sensors in smart home environments

With a rising ageing population, smart home technologies have been demonstrated as a promising paradigm to enable technology-driven healthcare delivery. Smart home technologies, composed of advanced sensing, computing, and communication technologies, offer an unprecedented opportunity to keep track of behaviours and activities of the elderly and provide context-aware services that enable the elderly to remain active and independent in their own homes. However, experiments in developed prototypes demonstrate that abnormal sensor events hamper the correct identification of critical (and potentially life-threatening) situations, and that existing learning, estimation, and time-based approaches to situation recognition are inaccurate and inflexible when applied to multiple people sharing a living space. We propose a novel technique, called CLEAN, that integrates the semantics of sensor readings with statistical outlier detection. We evaluate the technique against four real-world datasets across different environments including the datasets with multiple residents. The results have shown that CLEAN can successfully detect sensor anomaly and improve activity recognition accuracies.PostprintPeer reviewe

Becoming a SENCO: an investigation into why teachers become special educational needs coordinators in England

In England, every school is required to have a named and trained “Special Educational Needs Coordinator” (SENCO) whose function is to coordinate educational provision for children with special educational needs. In spite of this, little empirical research has been undertaken to explore what motivates existing teachers to take on this important role. This study examined why teachers become SENCOs through a series of interconnected studies. The first qualitative study involved generating reasons for participating in training from a cohort of SENCOs currently training (n = 88). These reasons were then explored further through a national survey of SENCOs (n = 618). Between the qualitative and survey studies, an analysis of Department for Education data was undertaken to establish the characteristics of the SENCO population. The SENCO workforce was found to be largely female and white with a high proportion working part time. Most SENCOs are in the middle or second half of their career, and they are employed on the class teacher rather than the leadership pay scale. Only a minority hold a full master’s level qualification (other than compulsory qualifications associated with teaching and the SENCO role). The initial qualitative study identified different drivers for those training to be SENCOs which were further organised in an ecological fashion. These drivers were used to develop a structured questionnaire which was the basis of the national survey. An exploratory factor analysis identified four motivational factors: two outward-facing factors (SENCOs commitment to ‘inclusion’ and ‘high quality provision’) and two inward-facing factors (SENCOs interest in ‘educational and professional development’ and ‘leadership voice and status’). Overall, the outward-facing factors were viewed as more important to respondents than the inward-facing factors. There were also some specific motivational differences between sub-groups. Younger SENCOs and those engaged in training were more motivated by ‘educational and professional development’. SENCOs holding school leadership contracts were more motivated by developing ‘leadership voice and status’ compared with their classroom teacher peers. Moreover, there was a significant overall difference with women reporting a higher interest than men across all factors. Key recommendations include the need for policy makers to understand and define the SENCO role in greater detail. In the SENCO recruitment process, schools and teachers must be cognisant of each other’s expectations of the role to ensure a good fit. Both policy makers and schools must understand the interests teachers express in the role and nurture them to prevent attrition from the profession. Further research is recommended as are suggestions for using the methodological approaches in this thesis for understanding interest in a range of other teacher roles and occupations

Assessing direct contributions of morphological awareness and prosodic sensitivity to children’s word reading and reading comprehension

We examined the independent contributions of prosodic sensitivity and morphological awareness to word reading, text reading accuracy, and reading comprehension. We did so in a longitudinal study of English-speaking children (N = 70). At 5 to 7 years of age, children completed the metalinguistic measures along with control measures of phonological awareness and vocabulary. Children completed the reading measures two years later. Morphological awareness, but not prosodic sensitivity made a significant independent contribution to word reading, text reading accuracy and reading comprehension. The effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension remained after controls for word reading. These results suggest that morphological awareness needs to be considered seriously in models of reading development and that prosodic sensitivity might have primarily indirect relations to reading outcomes. Keywords: Morphological Awareness; Prosody; Word Reading; Reading Comprehension

Bolničke infekcije urinarnog traktaposlije kateterizacije pacijenata u Općoj bolnici Dubrovnik Nosocomial infections of the urinary tract after catheterization of patients at the General Hospital Dubrovnik

Uvod: Kateterizacijamokraćnog sustava u početku je izvođena uporabom šupljihdrvenih cjevčica i palminog lišća. Danas se urinarni kateteri izrađuju od fleksibilnih lako sterilizirajućih materijala.Bolničke infekcije vodeći su uzrok morbiditeta i mortaliteta kod bolesnika u bolničkom režimu liječenja. Usporedo s razvojem materijala za izradu urinarnih katetera povećavala se i njihova uporaba, ali i incidencija infekcija mokraćnog sustava. Bilježenje, analiza i upotreba podataka o infekcijama važan su dio planiranja mjera kojima možemo utjecati na prevenciju, ali i na što učinkovitije liječenje već nastalih infekcija, i to posebice zbog potrebe kontinuiranog smanjenja direktnih i indirektnih troškova liječenja. Metode: Retrospektivno deskriptivno istraživanje. Istraživanje je provedeno u Općoj bolnici Dubrovnik u vremenu od 2011. do 2015. godine. Uključni su kriteriji bili, i to: ukupan broj bolesnika te onih kod kojih je učinjena kateterizacija mokraćnog mjehura; pacijenti s mikrobiološkom analizom verificiranim postojanje infekcija urotrakta, podatci o broju dana bolničkog liječenja, bolnički odjel, u razmatranje je uvršteno pet bolničkih odjela, verificirano postojanje antibiograma pretrage urina. U istraživanom razdoblju iznalazi se da je bolnički liječeno 10615 bolesnika, a uključne kriterije zadovoljavaju 204 bolesnika. Rezultati: Ukupni broj infekcija uzrokovan kateterizacijom mokraćnog sustava iznosio je 1,9%, s najvećom incidencijom u starosnoj dobi većoj od 65 godina [77,45%]. U odnosu na incidenciju, uzročnici infekcije mokračnog sustava bili su, i to: Pseudomonas (22,05%), Klebsiella (19,11%), Enterococcus (15,58%), Escherichia (15,58%) Enterobacter (8,33%). U odnosu na spol, značajno je niža pojavnost kod ženske populacije[54,42%], u odnosu na do danas publicirane rezultate. Značajno je niska pojavnost infekcija uzrokovanih zlatnim stafilokokom [1;0,49%]. Zastupljenost po spolovima u znatnoj je mjeri odstupala od očekivanih rezultata. Literaturni navodi usmjeravaju na očekivanje značajno višeg postotka žena sa IMS-u povezanim s kateterizacijom, u rasponu od 75–80%, ovisno o izvoru. U muškoj populaciji infekcija mokraćnog sutava zabilježena je u obimu od 45,58%. Zaključak: Prevalencija verificiranih infekcija mokraćnog sustava koje su uzrokovane kateterizacijom ne razlikuje se značajno od do danas publiciranih rezultata učinjenih studija. Međutim, iznalazi se značajno veća incidencija infekcije mokraćnog sustava u bolesnika muške populacije u odnosu na publicirane rezultate sličnih studija. Stoga se iznalazi potreba za dodatnom analizom pojavnosti infekcija mokraćnog trakta uzrokovanih kateterizacijom, u kojoj bi trebalo usporediti prevalenciju infekcije u odnosu na pojavnost po svakom pojedinom bolničkom odjelu i to u ovisnosti o sveukupnom broju hospitaliziranih pacijenata i verificiranih dijagnoza. Visoka incidencija infekcije kod bolesnika muške po-pulacije nije kompatibilna s dosad publiciranim rezultatima, te navedeno može biti značajan čimbenik u daljnjoj evaluaciji točnosti podataka informatičkog sustava Opće bolnice Dubrovnik i za provođenje budućih istraživanja

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy