The Education Endowment Foundation
The EEF recommend research evidenced strategies for raising attainment amongst disadvantaged groups. Their findings suggest that strategies such as feedback, metacognition, reading comprehension programmes, mastery, small group tuition and peer tutoring raise the attainment of both vulnerable students and other students alike. We have focused on these strategies.
Which Students Generate Pupil Premium Funding?
The pupil premium is additional funding given to publicly funded schools in England in relation to disadvantaged pupils in the school, with the intention of helping to close the gap between them and their peers.
School will receive Pupil Premium funding for:
every child currently registered as eligible for free school meals
all children eligible for free school meals at any point in the past 6 years
children who have been looked after for 6 months or longer
looked-after children who:
Ofsted (2012)
‘Equality of opportunity is at the centre of this inclusive school’s work. This is evident in the effective tracking and intervention systems that ensure that all groups of students make similar good progress.’
‘The additional funding for those students eligible for the pupil premium has been spent effectively by the school on in-class support from teaching assistants and out of classroom interventions. As a result, this group of students is making at least good progress.’
‘Regular assessment ensures that these teachers know their students well and set work that is pitched at the right level. These lessons are typically delivered at a demanding pace, and teachers use questioning extremely well to help students improve their thinking skills and test out what they have understood.’
Student Outcomes
Progression Routes (destinations):
Students have progressed onto positive activity post 16 (2015 leavers current activity in 2016): 246 FT education, 1 PT education, 13 apprenticeship or training, 3 cannot be contacted, 1 moved abroad and 1 NEET.
Attainment:
Over time, PP students have achieved outcomes consistently above national averages (where data is available).
Over time, the gap between the achievements of PP students and that of all students in their own school cohort has been consistently much lower than national average gaps.
In 2015, these trends were not maintained, however the cohort of PP students had lower prior attainment than in previous years and contained a number of students with barriers to their achievement beyond financial disadvantage, such as medical (physical/mental health), SEND, school refusers, joined school late, dual registered, 3 travellers etc. It also included 7 students (ie 32%) with no tested prior KS2 attainment, therefore the full cohort cannot be compared. Eg national 5A*-C inc. E&M for travellers is between 8 and 17%.
2016 saw a return to previous trends, with the % of students achieving 5+ good GCSE grades including English and Maths, A*- C in English and Maths, and Attainment 8 scores above the national average for all students and significantly so for PP students.
As a school we have identified a need to improve the % of students achieving A*/A grades, including PP students.
Funding to Support Students with Low Prior Attainment
