The “Pupil Premium” is an additional amount of funding received by schools in respect of children who are deemed to be at risk of suffering, through no fault of their own, within the education system. The broad aim of Pupil Premium funding is to reduce the gap between the academic achievement of pupils who are eligible for the funding and those who are not. Children who come into the Pupil Premium category are those who are eligible for free school meals (or have been at any time within the last six years), children of members of the Armed Forces and looked-after children. Currently, schools receive £935 for each Senior School Pupil and £1300 for each Primary School Pupil; this is in addition to the main Free School funding. We are glad to receive the Pupil Premium, which helps us focus, by means of a “ring-fenced” funding stream, on those children who generally need the most support.
In 2013/14 our Pupil Premium funding amounted to £32,966.
The Grindon Hall Christian School Aims and Objectives in Spending the Pupil Premium Grant:
• To reflect the love of God through education ensuring that each child reaches their God given potential
• To narrow the gap by addressing inequality and raising the attainment of children from low-income families
• To ensure specific supported programmes are implemented and professional development is undertaken to enable quality provision for children requiring intervention
• To ensure all children are given the opportunity to access a range of extra curriculum and enrichment activities
Assessing the Problem
Members of the SLT meet to identify types of disadvantage that the School might be able to address via the Pupil Premium funding and to plan interventions; broadly, these fall into the following three areas:
Accessing Opportunities – generally speaking, pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds will tend to have poorer access to some of the opportunities on offer in the School without support. Specific examples of this include funding residential trips and travel to regional/national sporting/music events.
Academic Achievement – the School’s academic monitoring systems allow us to measure the attainment and progress of our Pupil Premium’s against their peers. We are committed to identifying and addressing any gaps.
Social Skills - in addition to the general culture of the school the extra-curricular programme provides an environment where Pupil Premium pupils can develop a stronger set of social skills and we looked for specific contexts where this type of intervention would be appropriate. An example of this type of initiative was to provide musical instrument tuition and resources.
Summary of Areas of Pupil Premium Spend 2013-2014
Additional Curriculum Support (Various)
FSM & Milk
Staff Training /Administration
Exam Access
Reading Scheme
Residentials
Extra-Curricular Activities
Educational Software
Uniform
Services of Educational Psychologist
Measuring the Impact
Members of the SLT meet to monitor the academic attainment and progress of our Pupil Premium Pupils compared to their peers in order to identify any gaps and to evaluate the effectiveness of any initiatives. For 2013 -14 the academic progress of our Pupil Premium pupils is summarised in the table below:
|
|
Making expected progress
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Exceeding expected progress
|
|
GHCS PP(1)
|
National
(2)
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GHCS all pupils(3)
|
GHCS PP(1)
|
National (2)
|
GHCS all pupils(3)
|
|
English
|
79%
|
73%
|
68%
|
21%
|
32%
|
38%
|
|
Mathematics
|
74%
|
73%
|
81%
|
11%
|
33%
|
49%
|
|
(1) For How We Measure Progress – please see below.
(2) National expected progress is the 2013 KS2 to KS4 measure.
(3) This is the School’s 2014 KS2 to KS4 measure.
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How We Measure Progress
Reception – the measure applied is the pupil’s profile summary scores (early years foundation stage) for literacy and numeracy, where 1 would indicate less than, 2 expected, and 3 better than expected progress.
Y1 – 5 – the measure is the difference between the Granada Learning Assessment progress in English standardised scores for the end of 2012-13 and 2013-14. The same measure is applied for mathematics.
Y6 – the measure is progress between KS1 to KS2.
Y7 – the measure is progress from the KS2 (Y6) to the February half term (Y7) assessment as being in line to attain the pupil’s target grade.
Y8 – 10 – the measure is the end of academic year examination grade compared with the pupil’s GCSE target grade.
Y11 – the measure is the KS2 to KS4 progress.
Y12 – the measure is the student’s AS grade compared with his or her target grade, which is based on the GCSE prior attainment.