Pupil Premium
What is the Pupil Premium Grant?
The Pupil Premium Grant is allocated to children from low-income families who are, or have been, eligible for free school meals (FSM), within the last six years. The grant is also made available to support children of service personnel and those who are looked after by the local authority (LAC).
What are our aims for the Pupil Premium Grant?
The aim of the Pupil Premium is to identify and implement strategies that help to increase social mobility and reduce the attainment gap between the most and least disadvantaged pupils nationally. We have placed a strong emphasis on securing foundations in literacy and numeracy as we believe that our disadvantaged pupils require most support in these key areas. Furthermore, we believe that strong literacy and numeracy are crucial for preparing children for life beyond school.
Who benefits from the Pupil Premium Grant?
At St John Fisher School, we ensure that the Pupil Premium Grant has the most benefit for those with the greatest disadvantage. Being a small school with a large proportion of disadvantaged children means that some of the interventions put in place are shared by children who are not in receipt of Pupil Premium funding. We do this in order to promote good progress for all children.
What barriers do pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant face?
The barriers and challenges disadvantaged pupils face are complex and varied- there is no single difficulty faced by all. However, we have identified several barriers that we believe are particularly relevant to our disadvantaged children in our context.
These are the key barriers we have identified:
- School Attendence
- Opportunities to enjoy books and practice reading skills regularly at home
- Children who speak English as an additional language struggle to access learning in all areas.
- Gaps in mathematical understanding, which have been impacted by poor attendance, particularly around lockdown.
We allocate our Pupil Premium Grant to resources that aim to close the gaps in these areas.
How do we decide how to spend the Pupil Premium Grant?
In deciding how to use our Pupil Premium Grant, we draw upon the following sources:
- Sutton Trust report: “The Pupil Premium: Next Steps” available here.
- Education Endowment Foundation Teaching and Learning Toolkit, available here.
- Research on disadvantaged pupils and the vocabulary gap, available here.
- Working together to Improve School Attendance available here
- Our combined professional experience of what works best
From these sources we have identified the following priority areas for spending:
- Evidence based literacy interventions: phonics, comprehension strategies, reading programmes.
- Evidence based numeracy interventions: Third Space learning
- Additional teaching staff to support interventions
- New Materials to encourage and support reading at home
- Creating an Attendance Team
- Robust phonics interventions to ensure Keep Up
Further Information & Reports
Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP)
From April 2015, children who are currently claiming the Free Entitlement for 3 and 4 year olds could be eligible for additional funding called the Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP). The Early Years Pupil Premium is extra funding paid to early years providers to improve outcomes for eligible children.
