What is Pupil Premium?

The Pupil Premium is a Government initiative designed to give additional money to support schools in raising the attainment of children who receive Free School Meals (FSM), children in Local Authority Care (LAC) and service children.  These groups of children have been identified nationally as achieving at a lower level than other groups and the Pupil Premium should enable schools to ensure that they diminish the difference in the children’s attainment.

Families can check their eligibility for free school meals by following the link: https://www.hants.gov.uk/educationandlearning/freeschoolmeals

As a school, we are held accountable for how we spend the money received through the Pupil Premium and for the impact that it has.  As such the Senior Leadership Team has worked hard to ensure that it is spent in what we deem to be the most effective way and have closely monitored its effect.

‘It is for schools to decide how the Pupil Premium, allocated to schools per FSM pupil, is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility.’ 

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The school’s Governing Body have been kept closely informed over the issue of Pupil Premium and how the school has used the money.  Whole Governing Body training on the issue of Pupil Premium has been delivered by the Local Educational Authority in order to develop the understanding of the governor’s in this area. 

The amount of Pupil Premium allocated to schools is based on the number of children who are currently known to be eligible for Free School Meals (FSM), or have been during the last six years, children who have been Looked After in local authority care (LAC) continuously for more than six months and service children. 

The level of the Pupil Premium for 2016-17 is £1,900 per every Looked After Child, £1,320 per every pupil who receives a Free School Meal and £300 per every service child.

How do we know if this is making a difference?

We track the progress of every individual pupil on a termly basis and we carefully examine the comparative progress of different groups of learners (eg boys, girls, children from ethnic minorities, FSM, children in care) in order to ensure that there is no significant difference in the attainment of these groups of children.  The DfE also publish a report called RAISEonline, which analyses our school performance data and compares us statistically to national benchmarks.

At the end of the financial year the impact of these measures will be analysed and reported in terms of the emotional and social impact that they have had, as well as the academic impact.  This will help to inform the Senior Leadership Team on strategies that were successful and that should be repeated.

The school governors regularly examine data and information which shows the ways in which this additional funding has affected pupil progress and well-being on a child-by-child basis.  For reasons of confidentiality, it is not appropriate to publish this information, even in an anonymised form, as identities of pupils could be inferred.

For more details on Pupil Premium please visit:   http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/pupilsupport/premium