Pupil Premium Strategy
Schools in England that are local authority maintained receive their budgets every year in line with the financial year. Budgets are made up of different ‘pots’ of money, depending on the children in the school. For example, when there are children with a designated special educational need and an EHCP (Education and Health Care Plan), school will receive some additional funding according to the level of need.
Schools also receive additional ‘pots’ of money for children who come into the following groups:
- Pupils who have been registered for Free School Meals (FSM) at any point in the last six years
- Children who have been looked after continuously for more than six months and children who have been adopted from care
- Children of armed services personnel.
This ‘pot’ of money is called the Pupil Premium.
What is Pupil Premium Funding?
- The Pupil Premium is funding additional to main school funding to address the current underlying inequalities between vulnerable groups of children and their peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.
- The Pupil Premium is allocated to schools and it is for schools to decide how the funding will be spent, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility.
Key Principles
These key principles are in line with the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) report ‘The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium’:
- Schools can make a difference to closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.
- Evidence can help to support teachers becoming informed about strategies that work and make a difference.
- Quality teaching helps every child and is the most important tool that school have to improve outcomes for all children. Using the pupil premium to improve teaching.
- Implementation matters and we aim to focus on a small number of priorities in order to give them the best chance of success.
- Support middle and higher attainers too. Children who are eligible for the pupil premium can fall into any achievement group.
Pupil Premium ‘myths’
We believe it is important that our school and parents/carers work together, in line with our school's vision and values. We therefore would seek to dispel some common myths about how schools can and should use the money they receive in the pupil premium ‘pot’.
Myths:
- Only eligible children can benefit from Pupil Premium spending.
- The Pupil Premium has to be spent on interventions.
- Pupil Premium strategy and spending can be separated from the whole school strategy.
Our priority is to build good quality teaching as this is the most important tool that schools can use to improve outcomes for ALL pupils.
These links provide additional information to parents about the Pupil Premium Grant. We have based our strategy on the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) document which can be accessed through the second link.
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium
https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/public/files/Publications/Pupil_Premium_Guidance.pdf
Please see our Pupil Premium report below, for information on how we use the Pupil Premium funding to improve outcomes.