Pupil Premium

What is the Pupil Premium?

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’). 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.

Accountability

The government believes that head teachers and school leaders should decide how to use the 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 Ofsted inspection framework, under which inspectors focus on the attainment of pupil groups, and in particular those who attract the Pupil Premium;
• the reports for parents that schools have to publish online.