Pupil Premium

Pupil Premium

The pupil premium is additional funding given to schools to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers. The Government believes that the pupil premium is the best way to address current underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their non FSM peers, by ensuring the funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most. The Government uses eligibility for free school meals as the main measure of deprivation at pupil level.

Common barriers for disadvantaged pupils can be; weak language and communication skills, lack of confidence, more frequent behavioural difficulties, attendance and punctuality issues and less support at home. The challenges are complex and varied, therefore, it is important that individual needs are identified and catered for as we are very clear that negative, outside influences are not an excuse for underachievement.

At St. Mary’s and St. Benedict’s school, there is a school-wide commitment to raising achievement for ALL pupils and a key objective for the use of the pupil premium grant is to close the gap between pupil groups.

Aims

• To close the attainment gap in Reading, Writing and Maths
• To continue to improve behavioural difficulties at school and/or home which are impacting on individuals accessing the curriculum
• To continue to improve confidence, anxiety/anger issues, self-esteem and independence
• To continue to improve attendance and punctuality
• To continue to develop parental engagement, support and partnership work to remove barriers to learning
• For ALL pupils to achieve the highest possible standards and realise their full potential in all aspects of their learning