“Teaching is not about answering questions but about raising questions – opening doors for them in places that they could not imagine.” ~ Yawar Baig

Pupil Premium:

What is Pupil Premium and its purpose?

Pupil Premium funding is additional funding given to schools so that they can support their disadvantaged pupils and close the attainment gap between them and their peers.  

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. 

Who is eligible?

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’). It also includes Looked After Children and Services Children. The receipt of this funding does rely on parents completing a free school meals form for all their children in school. Even with the introduction of universal free meals from September 2014 for KS1 children, we as a school still need parents to complete the relevant paperwork.

To check to see if your child is eligible for Pupil Premium funding (Free School Meals), click on the following link or  here to apply.

https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/education/schools/your-child-at-school/meals/school-meals/free-school-meals.aspx

If you are unsure as to whether you are eligible for pupil premium please speak to Mrs Redmond in the school office or email info@loscoe.derbyshire.sch.uk and we will help you to find out! 

Accountability

The Government believes that Headteachers and school leaders should decide how to use the Pupil Premium funding. 

They are held accountable for the decisions they make through:

• the performance tables which show the performance of disadvantaged pupils compared with their peers
• the Ofsted inspection framework, under which inspectors focus on the attainment of pupil groups, in particular those who attract the Pupil Premium
• the reports for parents that schools now have to publish online

Further information about how schools are held accountable can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pupil-premium-effective-use-and-accountability

Funding

In most cases, the Pupil Premium is paid direct to schools, allocated to them for every pupil who is eligible. Schools decide how to use the funding, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision their pupils need.

For pupils from low-income families in non-mainstream settings, the local authority decides how to allocate the Pupil Premium. The authority must consult non-mainstream settings about how the premium for these pupils should be used.

 Further information about the Pupil Premium funding can be found on the Department for Education website here:  https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium

The government has announced that, for the academic year of 2022-23, the pupil premium and service premium rates will increase. The allocated amounts for the different types of pupils eligible can be found here.

Pupil Premium at Loscoe C of E Primary School and Nursery

Our disadvantaged leader at Loscoe C of E Primary School and Nursery is:

Mrs Wendy Lynam (wlynam@loscoe.derbyshire.sch.uk).

DDAT's Expectations of it's schools:

Derby Diocesan Academy Trust (DDAT) aims to maximise the impact of pupil premium funding, while ensuring that we adhere to the government guidance: ‘Pupil Premium: funding and accountability for schools’ .

Therefore, DDAT require us to: 

• Have a senior leader that takes responsibility for the strategic use of the pupil premium funding, evaluation, and the reporting to accountable bodies.
• Produce a 3-year strategy for the use of the pupil premium funding. This must:

• • adhere to the guiding principles within this document (see next section)
  • have a clear rationale for the school’s spending of the Pupil Premium funding
  • include a section that identifies the school’s Intent to Spend the pupil premium
  • have carefully targeted activities that enable good learning and readiness
  • demonstrate how their spending decisions are informed by research evidence, making reference to a range of sources including the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) toolkit
  • clearly evaluate the school’s action on an annual basis

• Us to publish information in our Strategy Statement on its website, using either the DfE, trust template or an approved alternative.

• To facilitate training for all staff, so they understand the causes of underachieve, barriers to learning and strategies which help improve the outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

• To robustly monitor and analyse the academic outcomes, attendance, persistent absence, exclusions, rewards and sanctions and extra-curricular engagement to identify priority areas to address.

• Ensure all local governing bodies to have a link governor for ‘pupil premium’ who has received appropriate training. This link governor acts as a conduit between the school and the local governing body to ensure there is clear oversight of the spending. However, the whole governing body has accountability for the education of disadvantaged pupils.

• To plan a broad, deep, and relevant curriculum that actively seeks to reduce disadvantage with a strong focus on reading, the development of vocabulary, strong careers advice and guidance, social and emotional development, and enrichment.

• Ensure extra-curricular activities are accessible to all pupils and expense must not be a barrier for disadvantaged pupils.

Main Barriers To Closing The Gap

• Many disadvantaged children have gaps in their learning, arrive in school not at normal transition points and are generally below age related expectations when they start school. To address this, our strategies will focus on ensuring all disadvantaged children receive consistently high quality, personalised teaching and learning that ensures they make accelerated progress right from the start of their educational journey with us. 
• Many of our disadvantaged pupils have gaps in their vocabulary and are not as confident to take on new challenges. Therefore, our strategies will focus on improving disadvantaged children's independence, resilience, confidence and vocabulary.
• Many parents and families find it difficult to know and understand how best to support their children. Therefore, our strategies will focus on engaging with our families and pupils in their curriculum as well as improving the parents' and pupils' attendance and engagement.
• Many children have limited access to wider life and extra curricular activities further limiting their vocabulary and confidence to take part in new activities and take on board new ideas. Our strategies will focus on improving disadvantaged children's access to a wide variety of life experiences and extra curricular activities.

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How it is used

At Loscoe C of E Primary School and Nursery, we use our pupil premium to fund additional adults (including a specialised reading teacher) to work in school and support children. This support may be through:

• one-to-one, or small group intervention, in phonics, reading, writing and maths.
• delivery of specific language and vocabulary interventions such as NELI and Time to Talk
• pre and post teaching of key concepts and vocabulary for all curriculum areas
• social and emotional work one-to-one with children and their parents delivered by a Positive 4 Young People worker.

By using the pupil premium funding in these ways, we are able to ensure that pupils reach their potential and meet their targets. 

Additionally, we also use the funding to develop cultural capital in all our pupils to ensure those who are disadvantaged do not miss out. This may be through:

•  funding of trips, in school experiences and residentials as part of of our "Loscoe Promise" (see document library below)  
•  offering subsidised / free places in after school clubs
• funding places for musical tuition 

We also recognise the importance of food and nutrition so use part of our Pupil Premium allocation to:

• fund free places for all disadvantaged children at our breakfast club
• provide Fare Share food parcels each week

Further details of how we use our Pupil Premium funding can be found in the documents below and in our Disadvantaged Provision Map. 

Our work in school around the allocation of the Pupil Premium grant follows the following research and government guidance:

• DfE (2018) ‘Promoting the education of looked-after children and previously looked-after children’
• NCTL and the Teaching Schools Council (TSC) (2018) ‘Effective pupil premium reviews’
• Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2019) ‘The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium’
• ESFA (2020) ‘Pupil premium: conditions of grant 2020 to 2021’
• Ministry of Defence (MoD) (2020) ‘The Service Pupil Premium: what you need to know’

Loscoe's Pupil Premium Strategy and Statement

Please view the following documents, which give details of our Pupil Premium 3-year strategy for 2019-2022. 

We are required to produce a one year statement for 2022-2023, which is attached below. 

These documents include the following information:

• the current allocation of funding for this academic year
• a summary of the main barriers to educational achievement faced by those eligible within school
• how the funding is planned to be used to address the barriers
• a review of the previous academic year