Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium is additional funding given to schools to address the underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals and their wealthier peers. The Government believes that schools should decide how the additional funding is used since they are best placed to assess what the children need to remove their barriers to learning. These barriers are very individual for each child but could include: less support at home, parents who are not engaged with the school, weak communication and language problems, under confidence, more frequent home behaviour difficulties and attendance and punctuality difficulties. There are often complex family situations which prevent children from flourishing. Since these challenges are unique to each child there can be no ‘one size fits all’ approach.
The key objective in using the Pupil Premium grant is to reduce any difference in progress and attainment between those eligible for the grant and those who are not. We use the EEF Toolkit to access a research base for our decisions, as well as discussing in school the barriers which prevent these children learning.
At South Avenue Primary School we have high expectations for all children and believe that no child should be left behind. We strongly believe that your background should not define what you can aspire to, but it is your personal drive, resilience and commitment to learning which make the difference.
Our approach
The Pupil Premium Grant funding is ring fenced and used to benefit all Pupil Premium pupils. We have clear lines of responsibility with 2 members of the senior leadership team and a link governor taking responsibility for it. Around a third of our school population are Pupil Premium and the Pupil Premium Grant represents a significant sum of funding. We plan our spend carefully to ensure it is spent for maximum effect. We make informed decisions about our spend such as:
- Ensuring that spending is linked to gaps in attainment and to address well-being needs which are acting a barrier to learning
- Using our own data to target children and expand additional provision
- Make sure that there is at least good teaching on a day to day basis
- Using research when planning approaches and considering implementations of new interventions
All staff are aware of the areas of development in our school for subjects and year groups and they know which are the focus children in their classes and, where relevant, subjects.
Money is used to benefit all Pupil Premium children and aims to stretch the most academic children as well as the least academic. We aim to ensure that our curriculum gives opportunities for all children to shine in all areas to motivate and engage them in their learning.
We have revised our assessment and monitoring systems to support improvements in teaching and learning and review interventions to maximise impact. Our systems allow us to identify children who need additional support and to ensure that our class teams have relevant, high quality CPD.
For more details on the Pupil Premium, please visit:
