Pupil Premium Grant (PPG)
What Is Pupil Premium Funding?
The Department for Education (DfE) provides additional funding, known as Pupil Premium, to support specific groups of pupils aged between 5 and 16 years, who may be disadvantaged because of their family circumstances. It is the DfE’s aim that this funding is used to ‘close the gap’ in attainment that may exist between pupils from these families and their peers.
Pupil Premium funding is allocated to schools with pupils:
- who are known to have been eligible for free school meals (FSM) in the last six years (Ever 6);
- who have been continuously ‘looked after’ for the past six months all who have been adopted into care;
- whose parents are currently in the armed forces or are in receipt of a pension from the MoD.
Why Is There Pupil Premium Funding?
Department for Education data shows that pupils who have been eligible for Free School Meals at any point in their school career have consistently lower educational attainment than those who have never been eligible. For example, in 2009 - 10 GCSE statistics show that around a third of students who had been on free school meals in the previous six years achieved five or more A* - C grades, compared to more than two thirds of their fellow students.
How Is Pupil Premium Spent?
The DfE has given schools the freedom to use Pupil Premium funding as we see fit, based upon our knowledge of our pupils’ needs.
Our Philosophy
We believe in maximising the use of the Pupil Premium Grant (PPG) through a long-term strategy aligned to the School Development Plan (SDP). This enables us to implement a blend of short, medium and long-term interventions, and link Pupil Premium use with wider school improvements and improving readiness to learn.
Our school vision is, ‘Believing we can achieve’. Overcoming barriers to learning and focusing on the core curriculum subjects is at the heart of our PPG strategy. We understand that needs and costs will differ depending on the barriers to learning being addressed. We are investing in preparatory work to enable children to get into good learning routines. As such, we do not automatically allocate personal budgets per pupil in receipt of the PPG. Instead, we identify the barrier to be addressed and the interventions required, whether in small groups, large groups, the whole school or as individuals, and allocate a budget accordingly.
Our Priorities
Setting priorities is key to maximising the use of the PPG. Our priorities are as follows:
- Ensuring an excellent teacher is in every class and that they are encouraged to maintain focus on teaching and subject knowledge so that each child’s progress is maximised. This means unnecessary workload must be minimised, so teachers can concentrate on teaching;
- Closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers;
- Providing targeted academic support for pupils who are not making the expected progress;
- Addressing non-academic barriers to attainment such as attendance and behaviour;
- Ensuring that the PPG reaches the pupils who need it most.
To view more information about our Pupil Premium strategy and spending plans, please see the downloads below. The strategy is overseen by the Standards and Curriculum Committee of governors. Please note that costs for these approaches are not funded by the Pupil Premium alone. The Pupl Premium Grant contributes to some of the costs for the strategies we employ, but costs are also funded through the main school budget and by parental contributions and the PTFA.