What is Pupil Premium?

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’). Schools also receive funding for children who have been looked after continuously for more than six months, and children of service personnel.

Why has it been introduced?

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 decides on how the money is spent?

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

How are schools accountable for the spending of Pupil Premium?

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 new Ofsted inspection framework, under which inspectors focus on the attainment of pupil groups, in particular those who attract the Pupil Premium.

This additional funding will be used to fund Senior Teaching Assistants to deliver additional support to vulnerable children. Appointment of teacher to lead pupil premium programme.

They will be offering specific intervention programmes such as ELS, Maths Recovery, fine motor skills and speech and language interventions to targeted children. Additionally a proportion of the funding will be used to ensure targeted children have full access to the schools curriculum and where necessary the use of social and confidence building groups will be set up.