Pupil Premium

Is Your Child Entitled to Extra Support?

All children who currently qualify for free school meals based on their family circumstances are entitled to pupil premium. In addition to receiving a free school lunch, if your joint family income is less than £16,190 per year and you are in receipt of benefits your child may have access to extra funding.

This applies if you receive any of the following benefits:

Universal credit (provided you have a net income of £7400 or less)
Income support
Income-based jobseekers’ allowance
Income-related employment and support allowance
Support under Part IV of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
The guaranteed element of state pension credit
Child tax credit, provided that you are not also entitled to working tax credit and have an annual gross income of £16,190 or less

Children who are or have been in care, and children who have a parent who is or was in the armed forces, are also entitled to pupil premium.

In addition, pupils who have qualified for free school meals on the above grounds in the past, but are no longer eligible, continue to receive pupil premium for the next six years.

Schools are responsible for recording the children who are eligible for pupil premium in their annual school census - you don't have to do anything yourself, other than making sure you return any paperwork that relates to the benefits you receive or your child's entitlement to free school meals.

Why register?

Registering for free school meals and pupil premium could raise an extra £1,345 for your child’s school to fund valuable support like:

Support with their learning
Access to specific learning focused technology
After school activities
School visits and residentials

This additional money is available from central government for every child whose parent is receiving eligible benefits. It is therefore important to sign up for free school meals/pupil premium as this involves more than a free school lunch and your child’s school will receive extra funding to ensure your child gets support.

Background

The ‘Pupil Premium’ is a recent government initiative that targets extra money to enhance the support and opportunities for pupils from disadvantaged or deprived backgrounds who, research shows, underachieve as compared to their peers.

This premium, which specifically targets low-income families (as defined by FSM eligibility) and Looked After Children (LAC), is provided in order to support these pupils in reaching their full potential.

Since April 2011, the ‘Pupil Premium’ has provided targeted school funding for disadvantaged pupils.

The government have used pupils entitled to free school meals as an indicator for deprivation and have deployed a fixed amount of money to schools, per pupil, based on the number of pupils eligible for FSM:

£1385 primary-aged pupils

£2410 for all looked-after chn & adopted chn

Schools have the freedom to choose the interventions that they consider to be most effective and cost-effective, but are required to publish on-line:

the school’s pupil premium allocation for the current year.
details of how we intend to spend the allocation.
details of how we spent the previous academic year’s allocation.
how it made a difference to the attainment of these children.

Service Child Premium

The Department for Education introduced the Service Pupil Premium (SPP) in April 2011 in recognition of the specific challenges children from service families face and as part of the commitment to delivering the armed forces covenant.

It is designed to assist the school in providing the additional support that these children may need and is currently worth £310 per service child who meets the eligibility criteria- a parent who:

is serving in HM Forces
has retired on a pension from the Ministry of Defence

Eligible schools receive the SPP so that they can offer pastoral support during challenging times and to help mitigate the negative impact on service children of family mobility or parental deployment.

Aims

All members of Veritas staff and governors are responsible for and wholly committed to meeting the pastoral, social and academic needs of EVERY child, within a caring environment.

This is central to the school’s ethos, in supporting the aspiration, enrichment and opportunities for each and every individual within our whole school community. As with every child in our care, a child who is deemed to be “socially disadvantaged” is valued, respected and entitled to develop to his / her true potential, irrespective of need.

Provision

To best support the good progress of our pupils, at Veritas Primary Academy we:

ensure that teachers know who their disadvantaged pupils are
ensure that teachers are held responsible and accountable for accelerating progress to close the attainment gap
use rigorous tracking and analysis of data to monitor progress and quickly identify early signs of under-achievement
use specialist teaching staff and programmes for 1:1 and small group interventions
monitor and evaluate impact through the analysis of pupil results
involve governors in planning and evaluating
give systematic feedback to pupils about their successes and targets for continued development.

Success Criteria

Veritas will:

adopt a consistent whole school strategic approach to ‘Pupil Premium’ allocation.
create a positive school atmosphere in which pupils’ differences are recognised and valued as full members of the school community; developing confident and independent learners.
ensure an effective system for the identification, monitoring and analysis of FSM pupils’ progress.
ensure high quality, targeted intervention and support for socially disadvantaged pupils.
ensure that the vast majority of socially disadvantaged pupils meet their individual targets.
forge positive home/school relationships which better support the needs of our pupils.

Pupil Premium Reports