Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium funding was first introduced in April 2011 and is additional funding allocated to schools to specifically benefit children who:
- Are entitled to Free School Meals
- Have at any point in the last 6 years been entitled to Free School Meals
- Are looked after children and have been in care for at least 6 months
- Are the children of current Service Personnel
- Are the children of Service Personnel at any point during the last 4 years
Service Pupil Premium
The Service Pupil Premium was introduced by The Department for Education (DfE) in 2011, to enable schools within England to provide additional, mainly pastoral, support to Service children on the school roll. The funding is provided by the DfE to enable schools to offer support during challenging times, which could include anything from a Service parent being away, being injured on active service, to bereavement. This funding will also help with induction and transition between schools. At St Francis we also run a service club HMS Heroes for service children which is linked to the national HMS Heroes website.
The funding allocation differs for each of the categories listed above and it is the decision of the school on how this funding is spent.
At St Erme we have allocated the funding across four separate areas:
1. To Provide High Quality First Teaching
This area is used to support the school in providing the best possible teaching and learning experiences for all children. Therefore the funding is primarily used to enable all staff to participate in high quality training, thereby ensuring the successful application of consistent best practice across the whole school. In addition it is used to secure the support of key staff to provide focused and specialist support e.g. the Special Educational Needs Coordinator. In addition it is used to enable key support staff to attend meetings, training and time spent for planning and assessment with teachers.
2. Specific Intervention
Specific interventions are employed across the school to enable pupils to make at least good progress. As part of this we deploy key staff (teaching assistants and teachers) to work with individuals and with small groups of children to enhance their opportunities of making progress. For example we use intervention for catch up maths, additional phonics, writing and 1:1 tuition. In addition to this we also provide emotional support and behaviour support through out TIS and forest school program.
3. Enrichment & Enhancement
To enhance the enjoyment of children at lunchtimes we have invested in some forest schools work and spent time developing our nature area. All teachers plan, organise and run a variety of extracurricular activities each week. These include a variety of sports, cooking, art, reading, homework, computing plus many more. To ensure full participation and access to all activities, for those children entitled to Pupil Premium funding the school will subsidise 50% of residential trips.
4. Parental Support
Excellent communication with parents is essential to improving children’s outcomes and therefore we use some of this grant to ensure that the school can reach out to parents using a wide variety of tools. These include a text messaging service and the school’s website.
