Pupil Premium

What Is Pupil Premium Funding?

Pupil premium is additional funding provided by the government. Its key aim is to address underlying inequalities between disadvantaged pupils and their peers.  

Disadvantaged pupils can be identified by:

• Pupils with an entitlement to free school meals (FSM)
• Pupils who have been entitled to FSM in any of the last 6 years (Ever 6)
• Those pupils who are looked after or in care (LAC)

Additional funding is also available for pupils whose parents serve in the military. Currently, we have no pupils who qualify for this.

We owe it to all our young people by ensuring they are given every chance to succeed. As a school, we are committed to spending our pupil premium money so that it directly impacts on our pupil’s academic progress and consequently their life chances.  We are committed to ensuring that gaps in performance between disadvantaged pupils and their peers are removed.

 What Have We Done With Our Funding?

 Some of the initiatives we explore with Pupil Premium funding include:

• Place2Be and School Learning Mentorship: the school has links with Place2Be a charity that supports and develops pupil mental health and wellbeing.  Pupils are referred via Pastoral Leaders for one to one, group or family support.  The aim of this intervention is to reduce and remove barriers to learning.
• Our Learning Mentor works alongside the Pastoral team providing an additional tier of support.
• Attendance Officer; this colleague works with pupils and families to support with improvement of attendance and punctuality to school. 
• Additional staffing; especially in English and Mathematics has enabled us to provide focused support so that we can ensure pupil needs are met.
• Teaching Assistants with English & Mathematics specialisms; we have been able to continue the development of our Teaching Assistants so that they are better able to meet the needs of pupils when supporting learning in lessons.
• The Rewards and Sanctions Policy allows our pupils benefit by achieving rewards for their good behaviour in and around school.  In addition, it also provides a rich source of data to enable pastoral leaders to identify early patterns so that intervention and support can be put in to support at risk pupils.
• Accelerated reader programme; we have invested in reading resources to support literacy across the school and has implemented the accelerated reading programme especially targeting pupils with lower reading ages
• Additional careers support and guidance; additional hours have been allocated to provide careers guidance and support throughout the school.  This has helped to provide direction and focus and raise career aspirations.
• Additional funding to support vulnerable learners so that they can access school curriculum trips and visits, resources, revision guides, Design and Technology ingredients / materials, school enrichment trips and activities days.
• TeamUp, a charity provides our disadvantaged, targeted, small groups of pupils with English and Mathematics intensive intervention to build on knowledge and skills.
• Brilliant Club is an initiative that has helped to raise aspirations of our young people. This has impacted on our pupil premium cohort as they are able to see Post 16 studies and University as lucrative future options.
• Breakfast Club ensures that our pupil premium children have the opportunity to eat before school so that they are able to concentrate more effectively whilst learning.  This has been supplemented during examination season with subsidised breakfasts and reward breakfast for those who attend interventions.
• Curriculum Development Bids – a sum of money has been made available for subject and year group leaders to bid from to support pupils with pastoral and curriculum initiatives.
• Additional library and homework club hours; this has helped to widen accessibility to a range of support services and resources for our pupils to use which may not be available at home.

Who Is In Charge Of Pupil Premium?

Everyone who works at Oak Wood contributes to the progress of all pupils with Miss Naidu (Assistant Headteacher) leading on this.

Effective use of this funding is monitored by the school governing body, using school systems that allow them to identify progress and any difference in the progress and attainment of disadvantaged pupils when compared with pupils who are not in receipt of this funding.

The Forward Plan and Spending on Pupil Premium Pupils?

Oak Wood School has over a third of its pupil population eligible for Pupil Premium funding, 38% of pupils.  This is above the national average of 28% (IDSR 2023).  Deprivation and local ward data also indicates that we attract pupils that come from higher than the national average levels of deprivation.  Due to the number of Pupil Premium pupils in our school a decision was made that money spent for the pupils is likely to have an impact for all pupils, with some tailoring specifically for Pupil Premium pupils. 

Oak Wood methodology for the Pupil Premium is based on suggested Ofsted guidance for Pupil Premium, where a range of provision, types of activities and resources were selected to ensure the best possible support for our Pupil Premium pupils.

In terms of monitoring and tracking the pupil premium strategy a tiered-approach for raising awareness, accountability and monitoring across our existing school systems:

Teacher level focus via personalised class context based planning.

1. Curriculum level via paired SLT & Middle Leader Joint lesson observations, raising standards meetings and other monitoring intervention activities.
2. SLT level by having a named senior member overseeing the approach.

The rationale behind implementing this type of approach was to secure a shared and distributive model by broadening the profile of the pupil premium strategy, and raise awareness of the national agenda to diminish the gaps within school groups.

For more information regarding Pupil Premium at Oak Wood School, please contact Miss T Naidu.