Pupil Premium

What is Pupil Premium

Publicly-funded schools in England, such as St Mary's, get extra funding from the government to help them improve the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.

 

Evidence shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds:

• generally face extra challenges in reaching their potential at school
• often do not perform as well as their peers

 

The pupil premium grant is designed to allow schools to help disadvantaged pupils by improving their progress and the exam results they achieve.

 

The Government provides additional funding for certain groups of pupils:

• Those who are eligible for Free School Meals
• Children who are looked-after or previously looked-after
• Pupils whose parents are either serving in HM Forces or has retired on a pension from the Ministry of Defence

 

Pupil premium is not based on ability. Research shows that the most academically able pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are most at risk of under-performing. Schools should focus on these pupils just as much as pupils with low results.

 

Service Pupil Premium

The Department for Education introduced the Service Pupil Premium in April 2011 in recognition of the specific challenges children from service families face and as part of the commitment to delivering the armed forces covenant. Service Pupil Premium is used mainly pastoral support during challenging times and to help mitigate the negative impact on service children of family mobility or parental deployment. Service Pupil Premium is there for schools to provide mainly pastoral support for service children, whereas the Pupil Premium was introduced to raise attainment and accelerate progress within disadvantaged groups.

 

How is Pupil Premium Used

It’s up to school leaders to decide how to spend the pupil premium.This is because school leaders are best-placed to assess their pupils’ needs and use funding to improve attainment.

 

We aim for every single one of our pupil premium funded children to reach at least national expectations in all areas. As a minimum, we want this group to achieve above the level at which all non-disadvantaged pupils nationally achieve. We also want the attendance of our pupil premium funded children to exceed the attendance of all non-disadvantaged pupils nationally.

 

We have largely targeted our additional pupil premium funding on:

• Extra staffing
• Extra intervention
• Pastoral care
• Enriching experiences