Pupil Premium & Other Funding

Pupil Premium

The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged students of all abilities and to close the gaps between them and their peers.

The main barriers to achievement for disadvantaged pupils in this academy are:

Gaps in knowledge; and difficulty retaining / recalling prior knowledge, resulting in lower attainment and slow progress rates
The impact of school closure due to coronavirus (assessments show that the gap has widened between disadvantaged children and their peers)
Low attendance and persistent absenteeism
Limited experiences beyond their home life and immediate community.

Our Abbeyfield Pupil Premium Strategy can be found below and outlines our key foci in regard to utilising this funding to improve the educational experience for some of our most vulnerable learners.

	Detail of challenge
1	Accessibility to the Curriculum The attendance of disadvantaged pupils is below the attendance of non-disadvantaged pupils. Disadvantaged pupils are over-represented in the school’s behaviour data. The number of disadvantaged pupils arriving late to school is higher than non-disadvantaged pupils.
2	Raising Aspiration through Careers and Curriculum Our assessments, observations and discussions with pupils indicate a need for greater challenge around aspirations and ambition for the future, directly linked to application during assessments and external examinations. Our externally validated outcomes indicate that disadvantaged pupils perform less well than non-disadvantaged, and in the most recent series a widening gap was identified in the following key areas: English and Maths G4+ and overall progress measures.
3	Improving Reading, Oracy, and Literacy Our internal assessments and reading testing indicate that disadvantaged pupils’ reading ages are significantly below non-disadvantaged pupils. This impacts their ability to access the curriculum and lead a successful life beyond school. Improving literacy, reading and oracy abilities of disadvantaged pupils will significantly improve the impact of the quality of teaching at school, and reduce the number of referrals by teaching and support staff for additional support, enhancing overall progress.
4	High-Quality Teaching and Targeted Interventions Internal surveys indicate that pupils feel more engaged with school and education when they receive high-quality teaching from teachers who teach positively, and support with accessibility to learning via differentiation, reasonable adjustments and targeted interventions. Where learning and progress concerns are identified, additional specific provision supports a ‘boost’ for disadvantaged pupils, to equip them with the foundational knowledge required to access quality first teaching.
5	Community Engagement and Family Upskilling The EEF research indicates that parental engagement improves progress when engagement links to learning. A significant number of our disadvantaged families live a greater distance from school and improving their perception of education and the school is significant to a pupil’s educational journey being underpinned by unwavering support for education by parents and carers. Where parents and carers lack the skills to support their child’s learning and progress, the school has a role to play in engaging parents/carers and offering extraordinary opportunities to provide toolkits and information for families to support their children with their learning and progress from home.