Pupil premium funding
All pupils achieve highly. They are very well prepared for the next stage in their learning.
Ofsted, November 2022
At Someries Infant School and Early Childhood Education Centre, we are committed to ensuring that all pupils have the best start to their academic lives. We exist to provide all of our pupils with the building blocks that enable them to make rapid progress during one of the most vulnerable periods of that academic life.
By developing a cohesive and ambitious plan for the use of our pupil premium grant funding, we aim to ‘close the gap’ in attainment between our disadvantaged pupils and their non-disadvantaged peers. We focus on providing experiences necessary for disadvantaged pupils – for whom we receive pupil premium funding and those for whom we do not – to overcome the lack of experiences they may be exposed to in their wider lives.
Our strategy draws on recent evidence which suggests a tiered approach that targets spending across three key areas, particularly on teaching, has the greatest impact on pupils’ attainment. With this in mind, our strategy has highlighted areas for development including:
- developing teaching and learning across all areas of the school
- targeting academic support to ensure all pupils are making good progress, regardless of their backgrounds
- widening our response to non-academic issues that impact success across our school
Purpose of Pupil Premium Funding
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 peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.
The pupil premium was introduced in April 2011 and is allocated to schools to work with pupils who have been registered for free school meals at any point in the last six years (known as ‘Ever 6 FSM’). However, it is not ring-fenced to those children and can be spent in any way that the school sees fit, so long as the school is able to demonstrate that the specific needs of FSM pupils have been addressed and how this additional – and specific – funding, which is intended to compensate for disadvantage, is being used for this purpose.
School leaders and governing boards need to ensure that their school is tracking the progress of pupils in receipt of free school meals (FSM) to demonstrate how the school is using pupil premium grant funding. It is for the school to determine how best to use the funding – there is no prescription within allocations other than funding should not be simply added to the dedicated schools grant budget allocation in order to compensate for any recent financial cutbacks to schools.
Since September 2012, school leaders and governing boards have been required to ensure that their school is publishing information to parents and carers about how pupil premium grant funding has been spent in its entirety and what the impact has been on learning, attainment and pupils’ wellbeing and/ or pastoral care.
Our Context
12% of pupils attending Someries Infant School and Early Childhood Education Centre are eligible for Pupil Premium or Early Years Pupil Premium funding.
Funding for looked after pupils does not go to their school. Instead, it goes to the virtual school head (VSH) in the local authority that looks after the child. VSHs are responsible for managing pupil premium funding for looked-after children.
