Pupil Premium Funding

Pupil premium is additional funding, from the government, provided to schools for supporting more pupils from low income families to ensure they benefit from the same opportunities as all other children.

There are three categories of children that qualify for pupil premium:

• Children who are eligible for free school meals (FSM)
• Looked after children
• Armed forces children

It is for schools to decide how the pupil premium is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils for whom they are responsible. Although these resources are targeted to PPG children, they are accessible to all pupils where necessary.

If you think your child is entitled to free school meals (whether you want them to eat them or not) then please let us know.

Main Barriers to achievement
The main barriers to educational achievement faced by eligible pupils are learning difficulties in reading, writing and maths, slower progress in writing and maths, attention and concentration and social and emotional difficulties.

At Goffs Oak all our staff and governors understand that we have pupils who are socially disadvantaged and we are committed to meeting their pastoral, social, emotional and academic needs within a caring environment. The targeted and strategic use of pupil premium will support us in achieving our vision.

Principles

• We seek to ensure that teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all of our pupils
• We seek to ensure that appropriate provision is made for pupils who belong to vulnerable groups, this includes ensuring that the needs of socially disadvantaged pupils are adequately assessed and addressed
• In making provision for vulnerable pupils, we recognise that not all pupils who receive free school meals will be socially disadvantaged
• We also recognise that not all pupils who are socially disadvantaged are necessarily in one of the above categories. We reserve the right to allocate the Pupil Premium funding to support any pupil or groups of pupils to narrow achievement gaps
• Pupil Premium funding will be allocated following a needs analysis which will identify priority classes, groups or individuals. Limited funding and resources means that not all children in the above categories will be in receipt of pupil premium interventions at one time

Provision
The range of provision the staff and Governors may consider includes, but will not be restricted to:

• Reducing class sizes thus improving opportunities for effective teaching and accelerating progress;
• Providing 1-1 and small group work with experienced staff focused on overcoming gaps in learning;
• Additional teaching and learning opportunities provided through key workers, trained TAs or external agencies;
• The majority of our work through the pupil premium will be aimed at accelerating progress across all areas of the curriculum
• In addition, the school recognises that the wider curriculum supports and enriches children’s development across the curriculum, and therefore funding will also be allocated to enable children to participate fully and actively in wider and extra-curricular activities
• Pupil premium resources may also be used to target able children on Free School Meals to achieve beyond age related expectations
• Providing family support

The Governors of the school will publish information on how they have used their Pupil Premium Grant to address the issue of ‘narrowing the gap’ every year we are in receipt of Pupil Premium funding. This runs with the financial year and we have to report on the impact it has had on the academic year. We also have to outline how we intend to spend our funding for the following year.

Date of Last Review: December 2023