Pupil Premium

What is the Pupil Premium?

The pupil premium is funding allocated to schools for the specific purpose of boosting the attainment of pupils from low-income families. Funding is based on children who have registered for a free school meal at any point in the last 6 years, children that have been in care for more than six months and children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces.

Why has it been introduced?

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 children eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) and their wealthier peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most. Whilst schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit we are required to publish online information about how
we have used the Premium.

The Pupil Premium at Edwinstowe St Mary's CE School.

The school has a very small proportion of children who are eligible for pupil premium. Over the last 3 years, the percentage of our pupils known to be eligible for free school
meals has ranged between 4% - 12% (the national percentage for primary schools
is 26.2%)

The pupil premium funding has allowed us to continue and extend what we already do - to monitor children's progress and to give additional support when required.  Children are certainly not singled out or stigmatised for getting some extra attention and we would never label a child in front of other children for receiving free school meals or being in local
authority care.

Pupil premium funding received by St Marys is used to put towards the cost of providing one or more of the following:

• Effective feedback on pupil's performance.
  We will continue to review and evaluate our marking and feedback policy. We
  will train and support our new teachers to implement this policy that ensures
  that the children understand what they have learned and what they needed to do
  next in each lesson.
• Booster sessions. We will continue to provide this for
  pupils in Year 5 and Year 6 who are not making excellent progress in reading,
  writing and mathematics and/or are at risk of not achieving at least a level 4
  in all subjects by the end of Year 6.
• Early Literacy Support. We continue to provide focussed
  teaching for small groups in Key Stage 1 to ensure that children have good
  levels of literacy (including phonics) by the time they leave Year 2. The grant
  contributes to paying for teaching assistants who support children by leading
  phonics groups and listening to children read.
• Enrichment of the curriculum. We will continue our programme of out
  of school visits to support pupils' engagement in their learning. Pupil premium
  funding is used to support families with the cost of school visits.
• Parenting Support. We will continue to work with all of
  our families to ensure that all pupils attend school every day by the use of
  careful monitoring and prizes for good attendance. We will continue to offer
  workshops to parents and carers to help them support their child with their
  homework in targeted areas of reading, writing and mathematics.
• Pupil Progress Meetings. We will continue to hold termly
  meetings with staff in each class to discuss the progress of each child in
  reading, writing and maths. These meetings will be used to plan and evaluate
  interventions for children at risk of not making at least good progress and/or
  achieving age-related levels at the end of the year.
• Technology. We are expanding the use of laptops
  in the classrooms across the whole school by reviewing software that makes
  learning accessible to all pupils, particularly those with specific language
  difficulties.
• Intervention and support from outside agencies.
  At St Marys we work closely with Think Children - an emotional well-being
  facilitation service, helping children to feel confident about their abilities
  and self-esteem within school.
• Professional development. 
  Whole school training has been provided on a number of issues including
  training from the British Dyslexia Association and Inference training.

How do we know if this is making a difference?

We track the progress of all of our pupils in school on a termly basis and we compare children according to different characteristics including FSM. The DFE also publish our
results in a report called RAISEonline which analyses our school data.

If you have any questions or would like to know more about Pupil Premium funding and how it is being used to benefit your child, please speak to the headteacher.

In addition, if you think your child may possibly be eligible for free school meals, even if you don't want your child to eat school meals, please fill in a claim form. Every
child who is eligible generates valuable income for the school. 

For more details on the Pupil Premium please visit:

Website - www.education.gov.uk/schools