Pupil Premium

Pupil Premium 2023 -24

This guidance is an overview of pupil premium for school staff, parents and anyone else interested in the pupil premium.

Purpose

Pupil premium is funding to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England. Evidence shows that disadvantaged children generally face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils.

Pupil eligibility and funding rates 2023 to 2024

This table shows how pupil premium funding is allocated to schools and local authorities. Allocations are provided on a financial year basis, based on the following pupil eligibility rates.

Pupil eligibility criteria	Amount of funding for each primary-aged pupil per year	Amount of funding for each secondary-aged pupil per year	Funding is paid to
Pupils who are eligible for free school meals, or have been eligible in the past 6 years	£1,455	£1,035	School
Pupils who have been adopted from care or have left care	£2,530	£2,530	School
Children who are looked after by the local authority	£2,530	£2,530	Local authority

The government has permanently extended free school meal (FSM) eligibility to
include children in all households with NRPF. These pupils should now be recorded
as FSM eligible in the school census and their pupil premium eligibility will follow on
from that automatically.

There is separate guidance on providing free school meals to families with NRPF. Since 1 April 2023, pupil premium eligibility for pupils who have been adopted from
care or have left care has included children adopted from state care or equivalent from outside England and Wales. 

Funding for looked-after children will be paid to the local authority and should be managed by the virtual school head in consultation with the child’s school.
The pupil premium allocations and conditions of grant for financial year 2023-24 provide further information

Service pupil premium
Service pupil premium is additional funding for schools with pupils who have parents serving in the armed forces. It has been combined into pupil premium payments to make it easier for schools to manage their spending.
Pupils in state-funded schools in England attract the service pupil premium grant, at the rate of:

 £335 per eligible pupil in financial year 2023-24
 £340 per eligible pupil in financial year 2024-25
Eligible pupils are those who meet one or more of the following criteria:

 one of their parents is serving in the regular armed forces, including pupils with a parent who is on full commitment as part of the full-time reserve
service – this includes pupils with a parent who is in the armed forces of another nation and is stationed in England.

 registered as a ‘service child’ on any school census in the past 6 years.

 one of their parents died while serving in the armed forces and the pupil receives a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the
War Pensions Scheme
This funding is primarily to enable schools to offer pastoral support and help mitigate the negative impact of family mobility or parental deployment. It can also be used to help improve the academic progress of eligible pupils if the school deems this to be a priority.Service pupil premium

Use of the pupil premium

School leaders can decide on which activity to spend their pupil premium (and recovery premium) within the framework set out by the ‘menu of approaches’. This can be found on page 7 of ‘Using pupil premium: guidance for school leaders’.
The menu is designed to help schools use their funding effectively to raise  the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.
The format of the menu reflects evidence suggesting that pupil premium spending is most effective when used across 3 areas:
 high-quality teaching, such as staff professional development
 targeted academic support, such as tutoring.
 wider strategies to address non-academic barriers to success in schools, such as attendance, behaviour, and social and emotional support.
The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) recommends that schools particularly focus their pupil premium on supporting high-quality teaching.
Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils, and schools are not required to spend all of their allocated grant on eligible pupils.

Funding paid to local authorities for looked-after children

Heltwate School must bid for money from the Peterborough Virtual School Head. They are responsible for managing the funding given to local authorities for the children in their care. They work with schools to ensure the funding is used to help deliver the outcomes identified in the children’s personal education plans.
They can pass all the funding on to schools or retain some to fund activities that will benefit a group of or all the authority’s looked-after children.

Non eligible pupils

Schools do not have to spend pupil premium so it solely benefits eligible pupils. They can use it wherever they identify the greatest need. For example, they might spend it on pupils who do not get free school meals but:

have or have had a social worker

act as a carer

Using pupil premium funding to improve teaching quality is the most effective way to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. By doing so, schools will inevitably benefit non-eligible pupils as well.

Academically able pupils

Pupil premium funding is not allocated based on academic ability. Schools and local authorities will receive funding based on all of the children who are eligible.

Evidence shows that academically able pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are most at risk of under-performing. These pupils should receive just as much focus as less academically able pupils.

How many pupils at Heltwate School are eligible for the Pupil Premium?

Currently half the young people at Heltwate are eligible for the Pupil Premium – 50% of our pupils.

These numbers do change throughout the year. The school includes disadvantaged post 16 students, but they do not appear in this number.

Is there an issue with eligible pupils not applying for FSM?

When a Housing/Council Tax Benefit form is completed, this automatically entitles child(ren) in the family to receive free school meals. The Council inform the Student Services Team and the school of the child’s entitlement to free school meals. We receive this information automatically.

Parents in receipt of Child Tax credit are required to complete a free school meal application form and we encourage all parents that receive the credit to apply to ensure that the school receives the Premium payment. Due to the introduction of universal free school meals some parents of year 1 and 2 children do not always realise that they are eligible and do not apply

Accountability

At Heltwate School, the usual cycle of data collection and the monitoring and tracking of the cohort’s attainment, will be used to inform student progress and enable the early identification of need, support and appropriate intervention.

We take seriously the performance of all our Students, and “We aim to meet each child’s individual need”.  We use the Pupil Premium to improve standards across the school and target the spending power that the Pupil Premium gives.  We publish a statement on the website about how it is used and the impact it has on the attainment of disadvantaged pupils