Pupil Premium

Introduction

Since 2011, the Government has provided additional funding to schools called the Pupil Premium. This extra money is given for pupils who have received free school meals in the previous 6 years. There is also additional money for children of Forces families and for any child who is in the care of the Local Authority. In addition, from 2012 funding was provided for those pupils who had not attained a level 4 in English and Maths at Key Stage2. This additional funding is to be used by schools to provide literacy and numeracy catch-up support for Year 7 pupils.

Purpose

The money must be used to provide additional support to ensure children from those families identified above do not fall behind with their progress. The Forces Premium is for the same purpose but also can be used to provide additional pastoral support for pupils whose parents may be, for example, away in Afghanistan.

Value

Total Income (Academic Year)

Expenditure

Since its inception in September 2011, these monies have been used to provide the following additional staffing/support/opportunities for these pupils:-

• Provide Literacy Support.
• Provide one to one support in maths and literacy for the weakest students.
• Small group interventions for students at risk of failing to make 3 levels of progress
• Create the new post of Learning Manager, which provides additional capacity for pastoral staff to monitor the progress of the most vulnerable pupils and to co-ordinate interventions where necessary.
• Create core subject Teaching Assistants to provide extra support to pupils in our lower sets, where appropriate.
• Curriculum enrichment and aspirational opportunities
• Create additional maths teaching to reduce group sizes for the lower sets.
• Employ English hours to provide extra Literacy support to our weaker pupils.
• Specialist literacy software.
• Specialist tracking software.

It is the intention to continue to fund the expenditure areas detailed above and the school has additionally purchased several netbooks to support learners, supported the purchase of specialist curriculum materials required for the successful completion of GCSE courses. For example this includes specialist clothing for the catering course, project materials in technology.

Year 7 Catch up money has been used to provide a summer school for pupils not yet secondary school ready.

Monitoring

All pupils have their progress tracked and monitored on an individual basis. In addition, the school monitors closely the progress of a number of sub-groups, eg:

• Free school meals (FSM)
• Below Level 4 (yr6) in either English or mathematics
• Children of service personnel
• Looked after children (CLA)
• English as an additional language (EAL)

This means we can intervene rapidly if a child is underperforming and it makes it straight forward to measure the impact of the additional funding.

Impact

The following tables detail the performance and progress of students in Key Stage 3 at the end of Year 9.