Pupil Premium and Free School Meals
What is pupil premium?
The government provides extra funding to schools if they have pupils that are at a disadvantage. The aim of this funding is to improve their educational outcomes.
To receive this additional funding, the government outlines the eligibility criteria as the following:
- pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals, or have been recorded as eligible in the past 6 years (referred to as Ever 6 FSM)
- children previously looked after by a local authority or other state care, including children adopted from state care or equivalent from outside England and Wales
- pupils who have parents serving in the armed forces.
To find out more information about pupil premium, please go to the government pupil premium website
Free School Meals
Your child may be able to get free school meals if you get any of the following:
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 the guaranteed element of Pension Credit
- Child Tax Credit (provided you’re not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
- Working Tax Credit run-on – paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
- Universal Credit – if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get)
Further details are available on the Government website here or via Worcestershire Council website here
What is our overall aim at Bewdley?
Our intention is that all pupils at Bewdley School, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and achieve high attainment across the curriculum. The focus of our pupil premium strategy is to support disadvantaged pupils to achieve that goal.
How have we decided to spend our pupil premium grant?
- Diagnosis of our disadvantaged students’ needs.
Honest reflection and analysis of our students to decipher what the barriers are that hinder their success. - Use strong evidence to support strategies.
We use reliable and valid academic research to inform our practices and policies in school. - Develop strategies.
Our strategic Pupil Premium plan incorporates the ‘EEF menu of approaches’ of High-Quality Teaching, Wider Strategies and Targeted Academic support.High-quality teaching is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on the areas in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support. This has the greatest impact on closing the disadvantage attainment gap and will benefit the non-disadvantaged pupils in our school.Our approach is based on all colleagues being aware of and planning interventions to meet the needs of all students based on diagnostic assessments with additional intervention and activity for disadvantaged students.Progress is complicated and cannot be improved with standalone strategies. Progress goes beyond the classroom too and as such ‘Wider Strategies’ are vital in ensuring that those students with lower social, economic and cultural capital are still able to reach their own full potential. - Implement strategies
Policies and strategies are implemented by all staff and not the few.
- Monitor and evaluate
Honest and genuine reflections facilitate better outcomes for our Pupil Premium pupils year on year.
What barriers do we want to address to support PP pupils?
Maximise attendance for PP pupils at school
Work to remove any barriers to complete home learning tasks
Ensure any literacy difficulties are addressed
Work to ensure high levels of personal aspiration post-16 and post-18
These barriers are informing our practice and policies for the academic year 2024-2025 to ensure that no pupil is left behind here at Bewdley.
Our full Pupil Premium Strategic Statement can be found here
The government policy on pupil premium can be found here
For further details, please contact our pupil premium lead Charlotte Simmonds – CSI@bewdley.worcs.sch.uk