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We are pleased to see that Pupil Premium funding will increase for both primary and secondary pupils in the 2014 to 2015 financial year, and that the £500/year Year 7 catch-up premium remains.
With its capacity for differentiated learning, tracking results and assessment and highly engaging format, many schools are finding that EducationCity is the ideal resource for schools to spend their Pupil Premium on, because it:
- supports differing pupil needs and interventions
- provides the quantifiable evidence of the impact these funds are having, in terms of raised pupil attainment
We are here to help
If you feel that your school is not making the most of the MyCity and SuccessTracker features which bring the benefits mentioned above, do not hesitate to contact us on 01572 725080. We are here to help, and will be happy to arrange for a member of our team to give you additional training over the phone.
Click here to read more about the Pupil Premium +
The Pupil Premium, introduced in April 2011, provides funding for disadvantaged pupils. It is allocated in addition to main school funding and was designed to address inequalities between children eligible for free schools meals (FSM) and their peers. Last year, for each pupil registered as eligible for FSM, schools received £953, which is increasing to a substantial £1,300 for 2014-2015.
Eligibility
The 2014 school census was conducted in January and the figures of pupils registered for FSM have been taken from here to calculate the funding each school will receive. For each pupil on the January consensus recorded as ‘Ever 6 FSM’, a school will receive £1,300. This term refers to pupils that have been eligible for FSM in any of the previous six years and includes pupils who were first known to be eligible in January 2014.
The Department for Education pays the Pupil Premium to local authorities in quarterly instalments. Local authorities then manage the funding and decide when to pass it on to the schools they fund. Education Funding Agency pays the premium directly to academies and free schools.
Monitoring its use
The funding is mostly paid directly to schools with the intention that the schools’ head teachers and school leaders should decide how best to use it. This is because it is thought that people within the school are better placed to assess what their school most needs. While this offers a degree of flexibility with the funding, as expected, the use of it will be monitored from time to time. The new Ofsted inspection framework for example, focuses on the attainment of pupil groups, particularly those which qualify for the Pupil Premium. Therefore, the reports of Ofsted inspectors will reflect how successful they deem a school’s use of the funding to have been. Furthermore, the government intends to hold schools accountable for their decisions through the performance tables comparing disadvantaged pupil performance with that of their peers. As part of this, it requires schools to publish information online about the school’s Pupil Premium allocation for the current academic year, details of how the school intends to spend their allocation, details of how the school spent their previous academic year’s allocation and how it made a difference to the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.
The government is keen to make sure that schools which use the funding well and make a real difference to the attainment of disadvantaged pupils are recognised. The Pupil Premium Awards will take place in London and the best school in each English region with be given recognition and invited to attend. To enter, schools must demonstrate objectively how they used the funding to achieve measurable positive results among their disadvantaged pupils, in time for the closing date in April.
Ways to use the Pupil Premium
The grant has now been available for nearly three years so some schools are beginning to see positive results. Ofsted inspectors visited over 60 schools shortly after its introduction to follow it up and found that schools concentrating on core subjects such as literacy and numeracy saw the best results. Focussing on the key stages of a child’s development in their school career by tailoring extra activities around certain year groups has also proven to be a successful approach to spending the money.
