to 2024/2025

If your school is an academy in a trust that pools this funding, state the amount available to your school this academic year

Our intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and achieve high attainment across the curriculum, particularly in EBacc subjects to prepare them for the next stage of their education, university or the world of work.

23.8% of our pupils are eligible for pupil premium funding. We focus our funding on improving all aspects of provision for pupils in a strategic and targeted manner to address academic, pastoral and cultural gaps.

The focus of our pupil premium strategy is to support disadvantaged pupils to achieve that goal, including progress for those who are already high attainers. We will consider the challenges faced by vulnerable pupils, such as those who have a social worker, family support worker, are young carers, are experiencing mental health challenges or experiencing other adverse childhood traumas. The strategies we have outlined in this statement is also intended to support their needs, regardless of whether they are disadvantaged or not.

High-quality teaching is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on areas in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support. This is proven to have the greatest impact on closing the disadvantage attainment gap and at the same time will benefit the non-disadvantaged pupils in our school. Implicit in the intended outcomes detailed below, is the intention that non-disadvantaged pupils’ attainment will be sustained and improved alongside progress for their disadvantaged peers.

Our strategy is also integral to wider school plans for education recovery, notably in its targeted support through the National Tutoring Programme for pupils whose education has been worst affected, including non-disadvantaged pupils.

Our approach will be responsive to common challenges and individual needs, rooted in robust diagnostic assessment, not assumptions about the impact of disadvantage. The approaches we have adopted complement each other to help pupils excel. To ensure they are effective we will:

·         ensure disadvantaged pupils are challenged in the work that they are set

·         act early to intervene at the point need is identified

·         adopt a whole school approach in which all staff take responsibility for disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes and raise expectations of what they can achieve

·         Share effective strategies across all the departments of the school

Student voice will show students are happy and supported.

CPOMS records, counselling records and pastoral logs will show that students are supported and safe.

Exam and equipment checklists are used to identify those needing support.

(£60,065)

(£32,000)

(£12,460)

One to one tuition | EEF  (educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk)

(£55,300)

Adolescent mental health: A systematic review on the effectiveness of school-based interventions | Early Intervention Foundation (eif.org.uk)

(£6,250)

Our assessment of the reasons for these outcomes points primarily to Covid-19 impact, which disrupted all of our subject areas to varying degrees. As evidenced in schools across the country, partial closure was most detrimental to our disadvantaged pupils, and they were not able to benefit from our pupil premium funded improvements to teaching and targeted interventions to the degree that we intended. The impact was mitigated by our resolution to maintain a high-quality curriculum, including during periods of partial closure, which was aided by a full timetable of live online Teams lessons.

Our assessments demonstrated that pupil behaviour, wellbeing and mental health were significantly impacted last year, primarily due to COVID-19 related issues. The impact was particularly acute for disadvantaged pupils. We used pupil premium funding to provide wellbeing support for all pupils, and targeted interventions where required. We are building on that approach in our new plan.

Our pupil premium strategy will be supplemented by additional activity that is not being funded by pupil premium or recovery premium. That will include:

·         embedding more effective practice around feedback. EEF evidence demonstrates this has significant benefits for pupils, particularly disadvantaged pupils.

·         ensuring pupils understand our ‘catch-up’ plan by providing information about the support they will receive (including targeted interventions listed above), how the curriculum will be delivered, and what is expected of them. This will help to address concerns around learning loss – one of the main drivers of pupil anxiety.

·         utilising support from our local Mental Health Support Team and local behaviour hub, plus funding for CPD from the local authority’s Wellbeing for Education Recovery budget, to support pupils with mild to moderate mental health and wellbeing issues, many of whom are disadvantaged.

·         offering a wide range of high-quality extracurricular activities to boost wellbeing, behaviour, attendance, and aspiration. Activities (e.g., The Duke of Edinburgh’s Award), will focus on building life skills such as confidence, resilience, and socialising. Disadvantaged pupils will be encouraged and supported to participate.

Planning, implementation, and evaluation

In planning our new pupil premium strategy, we evaluated why activity undertaken in previous years had not had the degree of impact that we had expected. We also commissioned a pupil premium review to get an external perspective.

We triangulated evidence from multiple sources of data including assessments, engagement in class book scrutiny, conversations with parents, students and teachers in order to identify the challenges faced by disadvantaged pupils. We also used the EEF’s families of schools database to view the performance of disadvantaged pupils in school similar to ours and contacted schools with high-performing disadvantaged pupils to learn from their approach.

We looked at a number of reports and studies about effective use of pupil premium, the impact of disadvantage on education outcomes and how to address challenges to learning presented by socio-economic disadvantage. We also looked at a number of studies about the impact of the pandemic on disadvantaged pupils.

We used the EEF’s implementation guidance to help us develop our strategy and will continue to use it through the implementation of our activities.

We have put a robust evaluation framework in place for the duration of our three-year approach and will adjust our plan over time to secure better outcomes for pupils.

1. Numeracy support years 7, 8 & 9
2. Year 7 reading program
3. Writing workshop
4. Literacy support years 7, 8 & 9
5. English and maths interventions run by our HLTA’s consisting of small groups of 3-4 students.
6. Free reading book for all Year 7 and 10 students.
7. Extra Maths books and equipment for PP students.