Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium is additional school funding from the Government to provide additional support to pupils on roll from low-income families who are currently known to be eligible for free school meals (FSM) or those who have been in receipt of free school meals in the past six years. The funding is also available for children in local authority care who have been looked after for more than six months, adopted children or children of service personnel.
Rationale
Reinwood Junior School recognises that all children, regardless of background, should have equal access to a curriculum that will enable them to reach their potential. The Pupil Premium is a government initiative that targets extra money to pupils from deprived backgrounds, who research shows underachieve compared to their non-deprived peers.
The government have used pupils entitled to free school meals as an indicator for deprivation and have deployed a fixed amount of money to schools per pupil, based on the number of pupils registered for free school meals. At Reinwood Junior School, we will be using the indicator of those eligible for free school meals and those in local authority care as our target children to 'narrow the gap' regarding attainment.
The government are not dictating how schools should spend this money but are clear that schools will need to employ the strategies that they know will support their pupils in order to increase their attainment and diminish the gap.
As a school, we are accountable for diminishing the gap, and there is a planned reform to the school performance tables to include new measures that show the attainment of pupils who receive the Pupil Premium compared with their peers.
The Department of Education has created a document - Pupil Premium - what you need to know - which expands on the purpose of the Pupil Premium and the key facts.