Pupil Premium
At Loddiswell Primary School we have high aspirations and ambitions for all of our children and we believe that no child should be left behind. It is extremely important that all of our children have equity of experience and access to learning that develops both cultural and social capital as they progress through school. We are determined to ensure that all of our children are given every chance to realise their full potential and aspire to ‘Be the Best you Can Be in Pursuit of Excellence’. 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 children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their wealthier peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most. Loddiswell Primary School is a smaller than average primary school, consequently cohort numbers and composition vary significantly from year to year so small numbers do squew the data year on year. Therefore progress is considered from each individual child’s starting point to the end of Key Stage 2.
It is for schools to decide how the Pupil Premium, allocated to schools per FSM pupil, is spent since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility. However, all schools will be held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support pupils from low income families. From September 2016, schools are required to publish a Pupil Premium Strategy. This will ensure that parents are fully informed about the amount of allocation, barriers faced by eligible pupils, how the funding is to be spent, how impact will be measured and the date the strategy will be reviewed. We also need to include how the allocation was spent for the previous year and its impact on eligible and other pupils. Our key objective in using the Pupil Premium Grant is to diminish the differences between all pupil groups within Loddiswell Primary School.
As a school we consistently track all groups of pupils to ensure that they make good or better progress given their starting points. Through targeted interventions we are working to eliminate barriers to learning and progress. For new entrants that start with low attainment on entry, our aim is to ensure that they make accelerated progress in order to reach age related expectations as they move through the school. Once at age related expectations, we always continue to extend that learning further to ensure that they reach higher levels of attainment. We closely monitor how we are spending the allocated funds to ensure they are having an impact on pupil premium pupil’s achievement.