What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil Premium is funding allocated to schools for the specific purpose of boosting the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. Funding is based on the criteria below.

 Eligible Pupils Criteria:

          - Eligible for Free Schools Meals (FSM) in the last six years; or

         - Looked after continuously for 1 day or more

         - Adopted from care

         - Children of Armed Forces personnel

The reason for it.

The Government believes that the Pupil Premium, which is additional to main school funding, is the best way to address the current underlying inequalities between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. Whilst schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit – they are required to publish online information about how they plan to use Pupil Premium and the impact it has had.

Statement of Intent

At St Edward's it is our intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make excellent progress and achieve highly across all subject areas. The focus of our pupil premium strategy is to support disadvantaged pupils to achieve that goal, including progress for those who are already high attainers. 

We will ensure that all pupils have access to a wide, rich set of experiences and there are numerous opportunities for all pupils to develop their talents and interests.  We will provide these rich experiences in a coherently planned way, in the curriculum and through extra-curricular activities.

Our strategy is to ensure that disadvantaged children in the EYFS, do well, with a focus on phonics and reading, writing and maths basic skills from the moment they start school.

We will consider the challenges faced by vulnerable pupils, such as those who have a social worker and young carers. The activities we have outlined in this statement are also intended to support these children's needs, regardless of whether they are disadvantaged or not.

A high quality education is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on areas in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support. This is proven to have the greatest impact on closing the disadvantage attainment gap and at the same time will benefit the non-disadvantaged pupils in our school. Implicit in the intended outcomes detailed in our statement below, is the intention that non-disadvantaged pupils’ attainment will be sustained and improved alongside progress for their disadvantaged peers.

Our strategy is also integral to wider school plans for education recovery, notably in its targeted support through the National Tutoring Programme for pupils whose education has been worst affected, including non-disadvantaged pupils.    

Our approach will be responsive to common challenges and individual needs, rooted in robust diagnostic assessment, not assumptions about the impact of disadvantage. The approaches we have adopted complement each other to help pupils excel. To ensure they are effective we will:

• ensure disadvantaged pupils are challenged in the work that they’re set
• act early to intervene at the point need is identified
• adopt a whole school approach in which all staff take responsibility for disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes & raise expectations of what they can achieve

Due to the Lockdown from March 2020 the impact from the Pupil Premium Strategy for 2019 2020 will be evaluated at the end of 2020 2021 and will span the time period from September 2019.