Pupil Premium

1. Introduction

The Pupil Premium is additional funding provided by the Department for Education to enhance the education of social-economically disadvantaged pupils (namely those pupils entitled, or previously entitled, to free school meals (FSM), Looked After Children (LAC) or adopted from care).

Schools are free to decide on how best to allocate the funds for programmes to support its disadvantaged pupils.

In September 2023, the percentage of pupils eligible for the Pupil Premium is 66% currently.

The amount allocated for the 2023-2024 academic year is estimated to be £587,880.

2. Our Strategy

2.1  Strategy Statement 2023-2024

Click here for our Pupil Premium Strategy Statement, which is outlined using the DfE’s template.

2.2  A summary of the interventions/provision and the reasons for our approach

The Pupil Premium provision is planned in an integrated and targeted manner for this academic year to ensure that those pupils entitled to the Pupil Premium receive additional support to address the identified barriers.

Our approach is a multifaceted, layered approach in order to provide bespoke support to pupils to overcome barriers.  The support provided is based on needs analysis, local and individual or specific needs, and drawn from in-house expertise, or where found to be effective in other settings, or from wider sources such as the Sutton Trust-EEF Toolkit.  This flexible, dynamic approach is required to reflect the complex needs of pupils, the changing social factors and trends, and allows us to react accordingly to provide a wholesome level of support.

In Key Stage 3, the additional programmes of support include the following:

• Those pupils with low reading ages receive additional support in small groups and where appropriate one-to-one support.  The programmes are managed internally by the Special Educational Needs Co-ordinator (SENCO).  We use a specialist external company to deliver parts of the programme.  Each aspect of the programme is monitored and evaluated.
• Identified pupils also benefit from a supported curriculum / nurture group approach in Key Stage 3, which is a primary-like approach aimed at pupils who are taught by one teacher for the majority of the curriculum.  This concentrates on basic skills to enable ‘catch-up’ to take place.
• Small group interventions on personal development for pupils to address emotional well-being and to support those at the risk of exclusion.
• Learning Mentors are employed to support a wide range of challenging needs.
• There are also additional classes for individual support, such as booster classes and academic excellence classes.
• Homework Club.
• Art and photography.
• Educational visits.
• Pastoral, wellbeing, personal development and counselling.

In Key Stage 4, the support programmes include the following:

• Targeted interventions for those with the greatest need in Years 10 and 11, including revision classes, catch-up classes, one-to-one programmes of study, Saturday school.
• Careers workshops and advice.
• Learning Mentors
• Educational visits.
• Off-site personalised learning courses.
• Behaviour support.
• Pastoral, wellbeing, personal development and counselling.

3. How we will measure the effect of the Pupil Premium

We will monitor the effect of the pupil premium through a range of different measures where applicable. This will include:

• Overall academic progress made by disadvantaged pupils in comparison to ‘other’ pupils.
• Level of engagement in educational activities, learning, and other wider extracurricular activities.
• Wider (extracurricular) achievements.
• Behaviour and personal skills development.
• Cognitive or mental health and wellbeing.
• Attendance/punctuality.

The above will be evaluated through a number of ways. This will include:

• Tracking and analysis of pupil data and outcomes.
• Case studies.
• Feedback evaluation.

Date of next review of the strategy: 26 July 2024

Note: If parents/carers are not sure whether their child can have free school meals, please contact the school and we will be able to assist you in confidence.