What is Pupil Premium Funding?

The Pupil Premium is ‘additional’ to main school funding. The Pupil Premium targets extra money towards identified groups of children to close the attainment gap between children for whom we receive Pupil Premium funding and those for whom we do not.

The identified groups of children for whom we receive Pupil Premium funding consist of:

• Children from low-income families who have been eligible for free school meals (FSM) at any point in the last 6 years.

• Children who have been adopted.

• Children whose parent/parents work in the armed forces.

• Children who have been looked after within Local Authority care continuously for more than six months.

The Pupil Premium funding is provided in order to support these pupils both academically and in wider terms. It is up to individual schools how best to allocate this funding. It is important that as a school we can measure the impact of this funding upon attainment and progress and how it made a difference for individual children.

We account for and allocate Pupil Premium Funding in 3 main areas:

• High Quality Teaching (for example, CPD, recruitment and retention) 
• Targeted Academic Support (for example, tutoring, one-to-one support structured interventions)  
• Wider Strategies (for example, related to attendance, behaviour, wellbeing) 

Measuring the impact of our pupil premium funding.

A formal review of the impact of our Pupil Premium spending is undertaken on an annual basis which is included in our Pupil Premium Strategy. This is published on our website in this section. We report to Governing Body Committees on a termly basis:

• Curriculum and Standards Committee
• Finance Committee
• Staffing Committee

These committees all have an important role in decisions made and the accountability of the leadership and management of the school, when evaluating different aspects of our allocation of Pupil Premium funding and the effectiveness of our school. We also work closely with our school finance officer to ensure that costings are accurate when we set our budget.

When we measure the actual and potential impact of our funding we consider a wide variety of factors and measures which then inform our decisions as to future allocation. These factors include:

• Progress and attainment measures of children- both statutory and non-statutory.
• The cost effectiveness of a range of approaches
• Attendance data
• Children's emotional and developmental needs
• How chosen approaches work together
• School based monitoring 
• School development priorities
• Staff training and professional development needs
• Identified resource needs to support high quality teaching and learning
• Clear identification of barriers to learning to support in identifying priorities.