Purpose of Pupil Premium

Publicly-funded schools in England get extra funding from the government to help them improve the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.Evidence shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds:

• generally face extra challenges in reaching their potential at school
• often do not perform as well as their peers

The pupil premium grant is designed to allow schools to help disadvantaged pupils by improving their progress and the exam results they achieve.

Schools get pupil premium funding based on the number of eligible pupils they have from the following groups.

• Schools get £1,455 for every primary age pupil and £1035 for every secondary age pupil who claims free school meals or who has claimed free school meals in the last 6 years.
• Schools get £2,570for every pupil who has left local authority care through adoption, a special guardianship order or child arrangements order.

The pupil premium is not based on ability. Research shows that the most academically able pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are most at risk of under-performing. Schools should focus on these pupils just as much as pupils with low results.

Use of Pupil Premium

Evidence suggests that pupil premium spending is most effective when schools use a tiered approach, targeting spending across the following 3 areas below but focusing on teaching quality - investing in learning and development for teachers.

Teaching

Schools arrange training and professional development for all their staff to improve the impact of teaching and learning for pupils.

Academic support

Schools should decide on the main issues stopping their pupils from succeeding at school and use the pupil premium to buy extra help.

Wider approaches

This may include non-academic use of the pupil premium such as breakfast clubs and supporting the cost of extra-curricular activities

The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) recommends that schools particularly focus their pupil premium on supporting high-quality teaching.

Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils, and schools are not required to spend all of their allocated grant on eligible pupils.