Bolsover Church of England Junior School
Pupil Premium Funding
What is it?
The Pupil Premium is funding allocated to schools for the specific purpose of boosting the attainment of pupils from low-income families.
The premium was introduced in April 2011 with the aim of narrowing the attainment gap between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and those who are not by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most. It also includes Looked After Children and Services Children.
Funding is based on: children who have registered for a free school meal at any point in the last 6 years (Ever 6); children that are in care or adopted, or were previously (LAC/PLAC); and children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces (children of service personnel).
To check to see if your child is eligible for Pupil Premium funding (Free School Meals), click on the following link here to apply.
Purpose
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 disadvantaged children, and their peers, by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.
Whilst schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit, we are required to publish this online along with the impact. Our school's documentation can be found below.
Accountability
The Government believes that Headteachers and school leaders should decide how to use the Pupil Premium funding.
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, in particular those who attract the Pupil Premium
- the reports for parents that schools now have to publish online
Further information about how schools are held accountable can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/pupil-premium-effective-use-and-accountability
Funding
In most cases, the Pupil Premium is paid direct to schools, allocated to them for every pupil who is eligible. Schools decide how to use the funding, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision their pupils need.
For pupils from low-income families in non-mainstream settings, the local authority decides how to allocate the Pupil Premium. The authority must consult non-mainstream settings about how the premium for these pupils should be used.
Further information about the Pupil Premium funding can be found on the Department for Education website here: Pupil premium 2024 to 2025: conditions of grant for academies and free schools - GOV.UK
The government has announced that, for the academic year of 2023-2024, the pupil premium and service premium rates will increase in line with inflation. The allocated amounts for the different types of pupils eligible can be found here.
Pupil Premium at Bolsover Church of England Junior School|
DDAT's Expectations of it's schools:
Consistent with our academy's vision of 'Offering our children and young people life in all its fullness’, Derby Diocesan Academy Trust (DDAT) aims to maximise the impact of pupil premium funding, while ensuring that we adhere to the government guidance: ‘Pupil Premium: funding and accountability for schools’ .
Therefore, DDAT require us to:
- Have a senior leader that takes responsibility for the strategic use of the pupil premium funding, evaluation, and the reporting to accountable bodies.
- Produce a 3-year strategy for the use of the pupil premium funding. This must:
-
- adhere to the guiding principles within this document (see next section)
- have a clear rationale for the school’s spending of the Pupil Premium funding
- include a section that identifies the school’s Intent to Spend the pupil premium
- have carefully targeted activities that enable good learning and readiness
- demonstrate how their spending decisions are informed by research evidence, making reference to a range of sources including the Education Endowment Foundation’s (EEF) toolkit
- clearly evaluate the school’s action on an annual basis
- Us to publish information in our Strategy Statement on its website, using either the DfE, trust template or an approved alternative.
- To facilitate training for all staff, so they understand the causes of underachieve, barriers to learning and strategies which help improve the outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.
- To robustly monitor and analyse the academic outcomes, attendance, persistent absence, exclusions, rewards and sanctions and extra-curricular engagement to identify priority areas to address.
- Ensure all local governing bodies to have a link governor for ‘pupil premium’ who has received appropriate training. This link governor acts as a conduit between the school and the local governing body to ensure there is clear oversight of the spending. However, the whole governing body has accountability for the education of disadvantaged pupils.
- To plan a broad, deep, and relevant curriculum that actively seeks to reduce disadvantage with a strong focus on reading, the development of vocabulary, strong careers advice and guidance, social and emotional development, and enrichment.
- Ensure extra-curricular activities are accessible to all pupils and expense must not be a barrier for disadvantaged pupils.
Main Barriers To Closing The Gap
- Many children have gaps in their learning, arrive in school not at normal transition points and are generally well below age related expectations when they start school. So our strategies will focus on ensuring all disadvantaged children receive consistently high quality personalised teaching and learning that ensures they make accelerated progress.
- Many of our disadvantaged pupils have gaps in their vocabulary and are not as confident to take on new challenges. Therefore, our strategies will focus on improving disadvantaged children's independence, resilience, confidence and vocabulary.
- Many parents and families find it difficult to know and understand how best to support their children. Therefore, our strategies will focus on engaging with our families and pupils in their curriculum as well as improving the parents' and pupils' attendance and engagement.
- Many children have limited access to wider life and extra curricular activities further limiting their vocabulary and confidence to take part in new activities and take on board new ideas. So our strategies will focus on improving disadvantaged children's access to a wide variety of life experiences and extra curricular activities.
.
How it is used
At Bolsover Church of England Junior School, along with other strategies, we use our pupil premium to fund additional adults to work in school and support children. This support may be through one-to-one, or small group intervention, in reading, writing and maths. We make use of this extra support for PT time in an afternoon in maths (Pre/Post Teaching Time).
By using pupil premium we are able to ensure that pupils reach their potential and meet their targets. Additionally, we also use the funding to develop cultural capital in all our pupils to ensure those who are disadvantaged do not miss out - this is used by funding of trips and residentials or the participation in after school clubs.
Last year, we also provided a set of uniform (including a jumper/cardigan and tie) for all our disadvantaged pupils. This will continue into further academic years where all new starters will receive a set of uniform upon starting at our school.
Our work in school around the allocation of the Pupil Premium grant follows the following research and government guidance:
- DfE (2018) ‘Promoting the education of looked-after children and previously looked-after children’
- NCTL and the Teaching Schools Council (TSC) (2018) ‘Effective pupil premium reviews’
- Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) (2023) ‘The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium’
- ESFA (2024) ‘Pupil premium: conditions of grant 2024 to 2025’
- Ministry of Defence (MoD) (2023) ‘The Service Pupil Premium: what you need to know’
Bolsover's Pupil Premium and LAC Policies
Click on the link to access further information about the Pupil Premium Funding and how we allocate it in our policy:
Bolsover's Pupil Premium Strategy and Statement
We are required to produce a one year statement for 2023-2024, which is attached below.
These documents include the following information:
- the current allocation of funding for this academic year
- a summary of the main barriers to educational achievement faced by those eligible within school
- how the funding is planned to be used to address the barriers
- a review of the previous academic year
Further Information:
Our Pupil Premium Leader in school is Mrs Stone.
She can be contacted, via the school office, on 01246 822324 or, alternatively, by email at info@bolsover-jun.derbyshire.sch.uk.
.
Our named member of staff for Looked After Children (LAC) and Previous Looked After Children (PLAC) is Mrs Bailey (our Head Teacher).
Our nominated Pupil Premium governor is Mrs Pamela Hall and our governor responsible for overseeing the Looked After Children in school is Mrs Pamela Hall. She can be communicated on the above contact.
11 Things Your Child Should Experience Before Leaving Bolsover CE Junior School
At Bolsover Church of England Junior School, we are proud of the curriculum we provide our pupils. Along with our staff and School Council, we have created a list of 11 things we aim for all our pupils to experience before they leave our school.