Pupil Premium
What is Pupil Premium?
Pupil Premium was introduced by the Department for Education (DfE) in 2011, as additional funding for pupils who receive Free School Meals and who are Looked After Children. This is because the DfE have recognised that good education is the key to improving young people’s life chances. This is particularly true for children from low-income families, or who are Looked After Children, research shows that without intervention these children are far less likely to leave schools with good GCSE results than other children. The Pupil Premium, using additional resources from outside the School’s Budget, is intended to address the current inequalities by ensuring that funding reaches the pupils who need it most.
The Pupil Premium has also been introduced for children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces. This service premium is designed to address the emotional and social well-being of these pupils.
The DfE have stated that schools have the right to spend this funding as they see fit based upon their knowledge of pupil needs. There is obvious accountability that serves to ensure that the money is used effectively and to the benefit of these key groups.
Schools, headteachers and teachers will decide how to use the Pupil Premium allocation, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils. Source – DfE website
Pupil Premium at Southmere Primary Academy
Our Strategy
As children move through school the pupil premium funding is focused on continuing to diminish differences with National expectations particularly for the most able disadvantaged pupils and other focus groups
At Southmere our rigorous monitoring and tracking of all pupils enables us to identify any pupils who are at risk of not making sufficient progress and plan and implement good intervention strategies.
The summary of the range of activities and interventions that the Pupil Premium is funding in 2020-2021 can be found below. This includes activities and interventions that we have employed to support pupil progress and attainment. Some have cost implications and others have required time within staff meetings, INSET and staff time to research theory and current pedagogical developments in education.
More information on how Pupil Premium is utilised can be found on our Statutory Information page here.