Additional funding has been received by schools to provide children who have been entitled to free school meals during the last 6 years or children who have been ‘looked after’ for more than 6 months with targeted support. This funding is known as Pupil Premium Grant (PPG) and was introduced in April 2011.
The present government have chosen to address the current underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals and other children by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches those pupils who need it most.
For the 2022/23 academic year Thurlby Primary School received £59,810.33 to add to our curriculum funding. All schools are required to account for how the money is spent to ensure it reaches and targets the appropriate children.
In this academic year the funding has been primarily used to fund the cost of targeted support teaching with the balance used to ensure pupils are able to experience new and challenging activities and for the acquisition of learning resources.
In making provision for socially disadvantaged pupils we recognise that not all those who receive free school meals will be socially disadvantaged. Not all socially disadvantaged children are registered for free school meals or indeed meet the qualification criteria. Allocation of PPG will be based on a careful analysis of needs to identify priorities.
With the level of funding granted it will not be possible for all pupils identified to receive support intervention at any one time. We are confident that the way the funds have been expended will support pupil access to the curriculum and enhance equality.
A great deal of monitoring takes place within the school at an individual pupil level and analysis of this data provides us with a reliable way of assessing the impact and effectiveness of the funding expenditure.
Analysis of data re Pupil Premium and Service Children relating to the last academic year shows that the average progress for service children is in line with expected progress. Pupil Premium children equal level of expected progress in Reading and Maths and are slightly below in Writing.
Number of pupils on roll: 203
Current number of pupils eligible: 50
Current number of service families: 4