Pupil Premium

What is Pupil Premium?

The government believes that it is unacceptable for children’s success to be determined by their social circumstances and intends to raise levels of achievement for all disadvantaged pupils and to close the gap between disadvantaged children and their peers.

The Pupil Premium is allocated to schools and is clearly identifiable. Schools can decide how it is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils within their responsibility.

The Pupil Premium and Service Premium was introduced by the government in April 2011. This gave schools £625 million of extra funding to close the attainment gaps for disadvantaged pupils and to assist with the pastoral needs of children with parents in the armed forces. This funding has now increased to £2.5bn in 2014-15.

When commenting on how successful schools use the Pupil Premium to narrow the attainment gap, the Department of Education said: 

‘Evidence shows that the most effective schools achieve this through a combination of high quality teaching, strong leadership, a relevant and coherent curriculum, a culture of high expectations and targeted catch-up and enrichment activities.’ 

DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION

To find out if your child is eligible for Pupil Premium funding and to apply please contact Mrs Madle in the school office. 

Please click on the link to read about our Pupil Premium strategy for 2020-21. Please note this is a working document and it will be continually reviewed and monitored to ensure that our targets are having the impact that we want to ensure that all Pupil Premium children make good progress from their starting points. 

Please click on the attachment below to access our Pupil Premium Strategy for the academic year 2021-22. Our strategy that we have developed, as in previous years is based on evidence informed approaches from the EEF. (Education Endowment Foundation) 

The link to the Pupil Premium page on the EEF is below: 

https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/guidance-for-teachers/using-pupil-premium

Please click the attachment to find out how our PP funding is planned to be utilised this year in order to enable our children to make good progress from their starting points, academically and socially. 

 

 

PP 2021 22 Website version

Following the impact of Covid-19 lockdown, schools were tasked with developing a Catch Up Strategy. Please click on the link below to see St.Helen's Catch Up 2020-21 Impact Report. 

Catch Up funding 20 21 Impact Report for Website

Pupil Premium Action and Strategy plan 2020-21

As a school we have built our Pupil Strategy for 2019-20 around ten key targets, building on the success of previous years. We are aware that the DFE has suggested that a PP strategy can be taken as a long term vision and strategic plan for three years. However because of the changes in year to year of cohorts and the differing needs of children we have decided to maintain a yearly strategy plan that can have regular monitoring as well as  developing  a three year strategic plan which is currently being developed.

Pupil Premium Aspirations:  At St. Helen’s we endeavour to provide opportunities in all aspects of school life, for all of our Pupil Premium children to achieve the very best that they can and to develop a lifelong love of learning, and to develop high aspirations and ambitions for their future whilst here at St.Helen’s, within our culture of ‘Flying High.’

PP Strategy 2019-20 Impact Report

PP Action Plan and Strategy 2019-20

 

1)   That all our children including our most vulnerable and PP children have access to good quality first wave teaching every day.

2)   That PP children have access to regular feedback, both self and peer assessment that clearly moves children’s learning on and receive access to one to one feedback from teachers and teacher assistants including Interventions when necessary.

3)     To promote and achieve high levels of attainment and progress, with all Pupil Premium groups continuing to diminish the gap.

4)     To ensure that all PP children make very good progress from their starting points in the core skills including Reading, Writing and Maths

5)    To ensure that 100% of PP children meet the Year 1 Phonics standard.

6)    That KS2 Year 6 PP children meet top 20% of UK FFT progress targets

7)    That KS1 Year 2 PP children meet top 20% of UK FFT progress targets

8)     That 100% EYFS PP children achieve a GLD.

9)     To ensure that 100% of PP children are involved in at least one extra- curricular and musical club each long term.

10)    That the attendance of PP children continues to improve by +2% and in individual families and children we see a year on year improvement.

For more information on how we will try to achieve these aims please click the link to read the full strategy plan for 2019-20

As a school, we are always looking for ways to improve children’s outcomes, building on what has gone before and incorporating the very latest research. Working with governors, we have set the following aspirational targets for our Pupil Premium strategy in 2018-19:

PP Strategy 2018-19 Impact report

PP Action Plan and Strategy 2018-19

The school looked at the needs of the children, the OFSTED action points, took advice from experts in the Local Authority and made the most of the latest research (eg Sutton Trust) available to plan the use of the Pupil Premium money in 2017/18.

Last year, the Pupil Premium money was spent on the following:

  • Targeted intervention groups, led by teachers and teaching assistants
  • Releasing teacher time to work with our most able Pupil Premium children
  • Professional development for Teachers and Teaching Assistants
  • Procuring services from the Local Authority such as: Inclusion support, Educational Welfare, Speech and Language Therapy, Behaviour Support
  • Deliver a tailored daily phonics programme
  • Pupil progress meetings 6 times a year to monitor children’s progress and the effectiveness of any interventions
  • Further train and develop teachers and teaching assistants to ensure the very highest quality of teaching so that Pupil Premium children make rapid and sustained progress
  • Purchase Learning and Life Skills programme to develop children’s learning skills and skills for life
  • Fine tune and focus interventions further to ensure a real impact on pupil’s progress and attainment
  • Senior member of staff (SLT) to mentor Pupil Premium children and identify ways to support them.
  • Develop consultation further with parents to partner with them with the aim of further raising achievement
  • Widen opportunities for reading at school and at home with a greater variety of texts
  • Subsidising school trips and uniform and providing other opportunities to enrich the curriculum
  • Fund a lunchtime football club with high quality coaching for KS2 Pupil Premium children
  • Support pupil premium families with cost of music tuition to widen opportunities.

Impact is measured both by reviewing children’s progress academically and by discussions with all parties involved about the child’s well-being and attitude to learning.

Examples of positive impact:

The pupil premium is used to support and enable disadvantaged children across the school to diminish the difference both academically, socially and in areas such as behaviour and attendance.

  • Our Pupil Premium children in Year 6 performed above Local Authority and National for Reading, Writing and GPS (Grammar, Punctuation and Spelling)
  • At Year 2, we only had 3 Pupil Premium child, who made excellent progress over the year. 2 out of 3 achieved the expected standard in R,W and M. 2 out of 3 achieved ‘Greater Depth’ in Maths and one achieved ‘Greater Depth’ in all three subject areas
  • In Year 1, 3 out of 4 Pupil Premium children met the phonics threshold, all making good progress from their starting points.
  • Attendance of Pupil Premium children as a group increased by over 2% in the 2017/18 academic year
  • CPD of teachers and teacher assistants focused on developing teaching and learning. Effective marking, questioning, use of TAs in different lessons with different groups of children including PP children.
  • Regular meetings were held with parents/ children of different PP children. (See separate records).This enabled children to improve punctuality, attendance etc and to work closely together on external home factors.
  • All PP children were able to access school trips throughout the year, including year 6 camp and also received extra-curricular clubs.
  • All children including PP children have access to a number of high quality texts.

The school has produced two cost-benefit reports to show examples of the impact that the pupil premium money has had at St Helen’s. The first reports the impact that the maths resource ‘Numicon’ has made in the school, the second the positive impact of our redesigned daily phonics programme that takes place in Year 1 and 2.