What is Pupil premium?

Pupil Premium is a Government initiative, which provides additional funding aimed at children from deprived backgrounds. Research clearly shows established links between deprivation and educational underachievement, with the grant enabling schools to support these children in overcoming any barriers they may have in successfully engaging with their education. The Pupil Premium is provided in order to support these children to reach their full potential by accelerating their progress and providing them with experiences which may not normally be available to them. 

DfE Information

The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England.

Pupil premium funding is available to schools maintained by the local authority, including:

• schools for children with special educational needs or disabilities
• pupil referral units (PRUs), for children who can’t go to a mainstream school academies and free schools, including:
• academies for children with special educational needs or disabilities
• alternative provision (AP) academies, for children who can’t go to a mainstream school
• voluntary-sector AP, with local authority agreement
• non-maintained special schools (NMSS), for children with special educational needs as approved by the Secretary of State for Education under section 342 of the Education Act 1992

Funding for financial year 2021 to 2022

In the 2021 to 2022 financial year, schools will receive the following funding for each pupil registered as eligible for free school meals (FSM) at any point in the last 6 years and children with no recourse to public funds (NRPF):

• £1,345 for pupils in reception to year 6

Schools will receive £2,345 for any pupil:

• identified in the October 2020 school census as having left local authority care as a result of:

• • adoption
  • a special guardianship order
  • a child arrangements order (previously known as a residence order)

• who has been in local authority care for 1 day or more
• recorded as both eligible for FSM in the last 6 years and as being looked after (or as having left local authority care)

Schools will receive £310 for service family children.  This is designed to assist the school in providing the additional support that these children may need and is currently worth £310 per service child who meets the eligibility criteria.

What is Recovery Premium?

The recovery premium provides additional funding for state-funded schools in the 2021 to 2022 academic year. Building on the pupil premium, this funding will help schools to deliver evidence-based approaches for supporting disadvantaged pupils.

School allocations will be calculated on a per pupil basis.

Mainstream schools will get:

• £145 for each eligible pupil in mainstream education

The government have included a minimum payment that we refer to as a ‘floor’ to ensure that:

• an eligible primary school will not receive less than £2,000

As with pupil premium, the funding for looked-after children will be paid to the local authority and should be managed by the virtual school head.

What is the National Tutoring Programme? (NTP)

The NTP is intended to help close the education gap which widened as a result of COVID-19. We know that disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils faced more barriers during school disruptions including problems in accessing digital devices and difficulties in studying autonomously at home.

The second year of the NTP builds on the first phase which was introduced in November 2020 to provide tuition to school pupils across England in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. The NTP has been expanded for the second year of the programme, offering schools three routes to tutoring: Tuition Partners, Academic Mentors and School-Led Tutoring.

- Tuition Partners: Schools can access high-quality tutoring from an approved list of tutoring providers known as Tuition Partners, who have passed a set of quality, safeguarding and evaluation standards.

- Academic Mentors: Academic Mentors are salaried members of staff and will work alongside teachers to provide a range of interventions, focusing on small group and one-to-one sessions. They will provide support tailored to schools, including subject-specific work, revision lessons and additional support. Academic Mentors are graduates or teachers who undergo intensive training before being placed in a school.

- School Led Tutoring: Under School-Led Tutoring, all eligible state-funded schools are given a ringfenced grant to fund locally sourced tutoring provision for disadvantaged pupils. This could include using existing staff such as teachers and teaching assistants or external tutoring resources such as private tutors or returning teachers. The grant gives schools the flexibility to use tutors with whom they are familiar.

This year our Pupil Premium Plan reflects the diverse range of income streams available to support our disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils covering a three year period. We have used our funding to enable children to make accelerated progress in the core subjects. 

Our key principles are:

• We recognise that all children can make progress and succeed with the right level of support and curriculum design and believe that early intervention enables a positive growth mindset.
• We have identified the key areas of disadvantage and adapt our curriculum design so that all pupils are challenged in their learning.
• We are a trauma informed school and use a behaviour recovery approach so that children understand they have the power to change their lives by learning to be resilient and take risks in their learning.

Please read the document below for a more detailed breakdown and impact of last year's work.