PUPIL PREMIUM - WHAT IS IT? 

Pupil Premium is funding paid by the government via the local authority directly to schools and is generated by the number of children who have been eligible for free school meals during the previous 6 years, children who are Looked After and service children. The Pupil Premium is targeted at improving the provision for those pupils.   

WHAT ARE THE BENEFITS? 

While we realise that not all the pupils who are eligible for Pupil Premium actually wish to have free school meals, we would be grateful if you would support the school by letting us know if your child is eligible, so that we can get as much funding to support our pupils as possible.  

There are many benefits for both the pupil – at Buxton Junior School these may include: 

• Breakfast club for children in receipt of free school meals, 

• Family Resource Workers to support children and families and impact on attendance, 

• Pupil Premium Advocates to work together with families to support, 

• Additional Teacher support through intervention groups, 

• Additional  Teaching Assistant targeted support for pupils in basic skills - reading, writing and maths (including Early Bird support before school), 

• Prioritised slots in preteaching and overlearning groups, 

• Additional TA targeted support to meet the social and emotional needs of pupils and improve attendance e.g. Early Bird, TalkTime and lunchtime sport activities, 

• Forest School nurture provision, 

• Subsidising residential visits, educational visits and other educational enrichment opportunities, 

• Subsidising uniform.  

Please note that when your child was at an Infant School, they were automatically entitled to a free school meal each day as part of the Government Universal Free School Meal initiative. However, depending on your circumstances, you may be eligible to register for free school meals during your child’s time at Buxton Junior School, in which case your child’s entitlement to free school meals will continue and the school would benefit from the Pupil Premium grant to support learning.  

We strongly encourage all eligible parents/carers to apply where appropriate. No one will know who has registered and it will not affect any other benefits being claimed. Any children who are entitled to free schools meals, whether they take them up or not, means that our school is given extra funding to help support their needs. 

We realise that information of this nature is very sensitive and we can assure you that all such information will be treated in the strictest confidence. 

HOW DO I KNOW IF I CAN AM ELIGIBLE FOR PUPIL PREMIUM? 

Registering a child for school meals is really quick and easy, and will make a big difference to the child and the school. 

To be eligible for Pupil Premium the family must be in receipt of one or more of the following benefits: 

• Income Support 

• Income-based Job Seekers' Allowance 

• Income-related Employment and Support Allowance 

• Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999 

• The Guaranteed element of State Pension Credit 

• Child Tax Credit, provided you are not also entitled to Working Tax Credit, and have an annual gross income, of no more than £16,190 as assessed by Her Majesty's Revenue and Customs1 

• Working Tax Credit run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for working tax credit 

Under the current rules the school would receive Pupil Premium funding for any child or young person who has claimed Free School Meals in the last 6 years. 

WE CAN HELP! 

You can register for Free School Meals by calling the Free School Meals Department at 01629 536 481 or on line at: https://www.derbyshire.gov.uk/education/schools/your-child-at-school/meals/school-meals/free-school-meals.aspx 

If you’d like help or more information please contact Mrs Smith in the school office on 01298 22156 who will be happy to help you. 

THE RECOVERY PREMIUM

In 20-21 the government provided an additional £80 funding per pupil premium child to support children to catch up lost learning time following the COVID19 related school closures. In 21-22, the Recovery Premium provided £145 extra per pupil premium pupil along with a ring fenced £5700 School Led Tutoring Grant (SLTG) to fund 75% of tutoring with school subsidising the rest. In 22-23 the Recovery Premium provides £145 per pupil premium child plus ring-fenced funding to provide tutoring. We are also able to appoint an academic mentor. 

Schools were and continue to be able to choose how best to use their funding; to support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation published support guides for schools, providing evidence-based approaches to catch up for all students.

The most recent 2021 EEF Guide to Supporting School Planning aims to support schools and proposes a tiered model that focuses upon high quality teaching, targeted academic support and wider strategies to aid recovery, building on their tiered EEF Pupil Premium Guide (2019), with appropriate adaptations for catch up. Our whole school improvement plan follows this model.

The EEF guide to Supporting School Planning shares the best available evidence, referring to existing EEF guidance reports along with school case studies, to aid school leaders in choosing the most appropriate strategies to address issues caused by the pandemic and allow pupils to catch up at the quickest possible rate.

When deciding how best to use the funding we received at Buxton Junior School, we considered evidence from the EEF, our understanding of individual levels of engagement with remote learning, our school context data and our observations and assessments of the children once they had settled back into school life. We identified a number of barriers to learning caused by school closure due to Covid-19, which can be seen below:

• Some children have specific gaps in maths in areas that were missed during closure but also in knowledge that was not secure prior to closure.
• Some children are experiencing difficulty with writing in areas of stamina, punctuation, grammar and handwriting.
• Some children have gaps in their phonic knowledge, affecting their spelling and reading.
• Some children have specific gaps in wider curriculum areas that were missed during closure, covered remotely and may not have been secure prior to closure.
• Some children have reduced focus and resilience in the classroom setting.
• Some children are finding the return to the school environment more challenging.
• Although school worked hard to provide devices, support and in school places for pupils to access the high quality remote learning provision, some children had limited access to remote learning and/or a greater level of adult support, meaning some content covered during this period was not as secure.
• Even with full engagement, home learning is not able to entirely replicate quality first classroom-based teaching as it is more challenging to achieve individual feedback and group work.

How do we spend the premium?

Following the guidance mentioned above, we structure our approach around quality first teaching (underpinned by detailed assessment) targeted academic support (for those pupils who are not making good progress across the spectrum of achievement), and wider strategies relating to the most significant non-academic barriers to success in school (including attendance, behaviour and social and emotional support).

The following table shows an overview of strategies put into place for each of the tiers, further detail about which can be found in the Pupil Premium Strategy and School Improvement Plan.

How do we judge the impact of our strategies?

Teaching and learning in the school is always observed as of very high quality and incorporates the range of strategies implemented to support the delivery of quality first teaching.

Robust baselines in reading, writing, maths, spelling (and phonics in Y3) were gathered in each year group following the full return to school in September 2020. Since then, the school assessment cycle (including teacher assessment) has provided information to inform our priorities with an increased focus on phonics in in LKS2.  

School’s target is that all pupils should make accelerated progress from this baseline, and we continue to work to, as a minimum expectation, meet targets set in formal KS1 SATS assessments (where available). Teachers, tutors and teaching assistants supporting pupils with targeted academic support regularly provide feedback to class teachers about progress made.

Class teachers monitor the well-being of the children via the strategies implemented. Where involved in specific interventions relating to wider strategies, family resource workers and Pupil Premium Advocates monitor and report to the class teachers about progress; the children should also be able to demonstrate and explain their progress confidently across the curriculum. Furthermore, school happiness surveys and pupil voice reports that pupils at Buxton Junior School are happy and thriving.