Pupil Equity Funding: national operational guidance 2026-2027

Reporting on Impacts

To ensure transparency, schools will be expected to incorporate details of their Pupil Equity Funding plans and explicitly report on the impact on outcomes for learners impacted by poverty. This should be done within existing local authority reporting processes to their Parent Council and Forum, including in their annual School Improvement Plans and Standards and Quality Reports.

These plans and reports must be made publicly available so that parents and carers can easily access, understand and where appropriate, challenge, what is happening in their school with regard to Pupil Equity Funding. The arrangements for publication will be confirmed by the local authority.

Local authorities will provide to Scottish Government two reports on school level PEF Spend:

• The first report, to be completed by the end of May, will capture PEF spend as of 31 March 2026, along with committed PEF spend up to 30 September 2026. This will help provide a more accurate reflection of PEF spend, given significant amounts of PEF supports staffing costs, which typically cover the academic year.
• The second report, to be completed at the end of October, will indicate how much of the committed spend up until 30 September 2026 has been invested.

Inspection visits and other review processes include a focus on how well schools use their Pupil Equity Funding. ‘How Good Is Our School? 4th edition’ includes a quality indicator to support self-evaluation of the school’s success in raising attainment and achievement and ways in which schools can demonstrate improvements in the provision of equitable opportunities for all learners to succeed. This aspect is evaluated, during school inspections, using the six point scale.

It can be helpful to promote engagement with your school to communities through engaging and innovative reporting methods. For example, some schools have highlighted how they have spent their PEF online through Twitter, Sway and other means.

In addition, the operation, use and effectiveness of Pupil Equity Funding at closing the poverty-related attainment gap at a local authority level will feed into other existing quality assurance processes, such as Audit Scotland’s Shared Risk Assessment.

Quality Improvement

The Quality Improvement Journey is a route map for delivering change in complex systems. It supports teams to develop stretch aims and meaningful measures at every level of an organisation. It ensures we focus on the most relevant issues, supports the development of a change theory to improve a situation and builds an improvement story with robust data and measures; this in turn ensures implementation and sustainability are built-in.

For more information visit: Quality Improvement Zone | Turas | Learn

The Quality Improvement Journey has been used well in Education to reduce variation in and across schools, and leverage better outcomes for children by addressing specific gaps. The National Improving Writing Programme is an example of where 20 local authorities have methodically improved outcomes in P4 writing and beyond. Teachers use the QI Journey to explore what is needed in the context of their classrooms, while being taught data analysis to understand the direct impact their work is having on children’s outcomes daily.

For more information visit: National Improving Writing Programme – CYPIC

The Scottish Approach to Change is a framework for managing quality and change. It supports public services to consider how to plan for quality, maintain quality and improve quality. Using the Scottish Approach to Change gives local authorities and schools a rigorous method to go about change, and achieve sustainable improvement. The more organisations who use this approach the easier it will become to work with partners as we will have shared language and tools for managing quality well.

For more information visit: Scottish Approach to Change – Healthcare Improvement Scotland