What is Pupil Premium?

The Pupil Premium is additional funding given to schools to support disadvantaged pupils. We receive additional funding for every pupil who has received free school meals over the past six years, children who are, or have been, looked after (CLA) and those children from families with parents in the Armed Forces.

We up-date our records annually to make sure we have an accurate account of the school population.  However, if your circumstances change please inform the school office.

In line with our vision and values, we seek to ensure the effectiveness of the use of the Pupil Premium.  As a result, we have based our spending priorities on high quality research such as The EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit.  This is an accessible summary of educational research which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.  

We understand that challenging socio-economic circumstances can create additional barriers to success for children. However, we are clear that these challenges can be overcome. The evidence base strongly suggests that the most effective way to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children is through excellent classroom teaching. Excellent classroom teaching can be achieved by all teachers with high quality professional development, sharing of outstanding practice and open and honest conversations about learning.  All children need opportunities to enrich their lives through experience and schools must make sure that where children are unable to access these through home the opportunities are provided for them by school.

Although financial support is provided for schools specifically for children who qualify for Pupil Premium, outstanding educational outcomes for these children are best achieved through ensuring outstanding practice in classrooms throughout the school. In this way all vulnerable children are helped to achieve the best possible outcomes according to their starting points.

Principles:

• We ensure that teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all the pupils.
• We ensure that appropriate provision is made for pupils who belong to vulnerable groups, this includes ensuring that the needs of socially disadvantaged pupils are adequately assessed and addressed.
• In making provision for socially disadvantaged pupils, we recognise that not all pupils who receive free school meals will be socially disadvantaged.
• We also recognise that not all pupils who are socially disadvantaged are registered or qualify for free school meals. We reserve the right to allocate the Pupil Premium funding to support any pupil or groups of pupils the school has legitimately identified as being socially disadvantaged.
• All our work through the Pupil Premium will be aimed at accelerating progress and may identify priority groups or individuals.  Not all children will necessarily be in receipt of interventions at one time.

Our strategy for the use of Pupil Premium funding is below.