Pupil premium

Pupil Premium
 
The Pupil Premium is additional funding provided to schools to support specific groups of children who are vulnerable to possible underachievement.
These include pupils who are entitled to free school meals (FSM), those looked after by the local authority and those now adopted but formerly looked after.
Since 2012, funding has been extended to include pupils who have been eligible for free school meals at any time within the last 6 years. Nationally, statistics have shown that students who are in receipt of FSM do less well than their peers in external exams. The aim of this money is to try to close that attainment gap. All schools are required to publish, on their websites, what funding they have received and how the money is being spent. 

Pupil Premium funding comes directly into school. It is based on the number of children registered as eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) at the moment and in the past six years, together with the number of pupils who are either currently ‘looked after’ or formerly ‘looked after’ and now adopted. It is not in any way assumed that all children eligible for the Pupil Premium are low-attaining or making poor progress. We consider how best to support the learning and access to all aspects of education for all categories of children, including those that are higher attaining in addition to those who have barriers to learning.

Potential barriers faced by eligible children Eligible pupils may face some of the following challenges:

  • Barriers to learning in one or more curriculum area which may or may not result from a Special Educational Need
  • Lack of self-confidence or self-esteem in learning
  • Social and emotional difficulties
  • Difficulties with making friends and establishing secure relationships with adults
  • A lack of resources to engage fully with the wider life of the school, including extra-curricular clubs, educational visits, instrumental tuition etc.
  • Families may need support for a number of different reasons some of which may affect their capacity to support children’s learning at home

How We Measure Impact

  • We assess the impact of our interventions in the following ways:
  • Progress in learning measured against EYFS or National Curriculum developmental or age-related milestones;
  • Progress in specifically targeted areas such as reading, spelling and numeracy using standardised assessments;
  • Progress in phonics and spelling against age related expectations in terms of numbers of sounds and words encoded and decoded accurately;
  • Progress with social and emotional interventions is measured through case studies of children.