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 2020 to 2021

In the 2019 to 2020 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:

• £1,320 for pupils in reception to year 6

Schools will receive £2,300 for any pupil:

• identified in the January 2019 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 £300 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 £300 per service child who meets the eligibility criteria.

Schools will receive £1900 additional funding for children in care to assist with their additional needs. In our local authority this money is held centrally and schools must bid for the money stating clearly how it will be allocated.

We have used our pupil premium money to enable children to make accelerated progress in the core subjects. The funding is shared between the following areas:

• Ensuring we employ the very best teachers and teaching assistants for our pupils;
• PSA support;
• 1-2-1 provision;
• Multi-agency support;
• Access to a learning mentor or drama therapist;
•  Extra support with phonics skills;
• Reading software: The Bug Club and Accelerated Reader;
• Training for staff around early reading development and reading comprehension strategies;
• Staff training: Research into the impact of our reading strategies on pupil development;
• Staff training: Behaviour Recovery;
• Gifted and talented workshops;
• Book awards;
• Junior Ten Tors training
• ELSA trained staff for emotional support

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