Pupil Premium (PP) and Free School Meals (FSM)
The Pupil Premium
The pupil premium grant is funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England. The funding is paid directly to schools. Here at North, we want to ensure that we are regularly understanding our students’ needs as well as informing our practice from educational research on what works. Most recently, our strategy is being developed through findings from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) ensuring that our disadvantaged students have meaningful participation and success throughout their time here.
Who is eligible for the pupil premium?
Quoting from the Department of Education website:
The following groups are eligible for pupil premium:
- pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals, or have been recorded as eligible in the past 6 years, including eligible children of families who have no recourse to public funds (NRPF)
- children looked after by local authorities, referred to as looked-after children
- children previously looked after by a local authority or other state care, referred to as previously looked-after children
Further information on the pupil premium funding can be found here:
Pupil premium: overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk)
Free School Meals
If you think your child qualifies for additional funding, please apply through Worcestershire Children First:
http://www.worcestershire.gov.uk/info/20062/schools/684/applying_for_free_school_meals
or call 01905 845280
These methods of application are quick, easy and allow parents/carers to utilise the existing account set up initially to apply for a school place. Once you have applied, you will receive a confirmation by email and the school will be informed directly.
For more information on the breaktime and lunchtime menus, and the daily amount for a free school meal please go to: North Bromsgrove High School & Sixth Form - Lunchtime & Breaktime Menus and Price Lists
Does this funding support continue in sixth form?
Please go to this page for more information North Bromsgrove High School & Sixth Form - Support and Financial Assistance
How do we spend the pupil premium funding at North Bromsgrove?
We don’t want to be restrictive or prescriptive on how the funding is used to help our disadvantaged students, we want to be able to address their need; academic, or pastoral or both, and then provide what the student and/or family see as beneficial to adding to their positive experience here whilst at North. Implementation of the funding in the past has included, but not limited to:
- Small group teaching assistant support.
- Small group revision sessions.
- Study skills sessions.
- Support with uniform and/or PE kit. We have pre-loved uniform for all families to access at any time from the pastoral hub. Students can speak to their tutor or Head of Year.
- Support with stationary/learning materials. Students can speak to their tutor or Head of Year.
- Financial support towards materials for practical subjects at GCSE, such as contribution towards cooking ingredients or peripatetic music lessons.
- Financial support towards being well equipped for completing the Duke of Edinburgh expeditions.
- Financial support towards education trips supporting the curriculum and attainment.
- Sessions designed to support resilience or peer mentoring.
- Counselling or mentoring from qualified internal or external practitioners, where there is an identified need.
- Provision of additional careers advice (CEIAG), where there is an identified need.
- Any other valid use of the funding to support the attainment and welfare of young people in our care.
If a trip, or similar, is organised, the discounted cost for our PP students can be seen when the parent/carer logs into their personal Parent Pay account.
If there is something who would like support with for your child, please contact their tutor, their head of year or Mrs Wakefield, Pupil Premium Lead lwa@northbromsgrove.worcs.sch.uk
What strategies are the staff body utilising to support students here at North Bromsgrove?
The EEF Pupil Premium Menu split the potential strategies to support disadvantaged students into 3 strands; High Quality Teaching, Targeted Academic Support & Wider Strategies. Within these strands there are high quality evidenced practical resources to support schools to spend PP funding effectively. North have already begun on this journey, many of our disadvantaged students don’t lack talent or ability, some just lack opportunity. However, for others, they have many opportunities inside and outside of school and it may be their funding is used to support in materials to push their learning, tailored experiences and the comfort in consistent, well experienced teachers. Here at North, we hope to offer all our students, a balance between intervention, curriculum, equity and opportunity, to thrive.
Here at North, teachers are implementing strategies daily, with tools to support them, which include but aren’t limited to:
- Attendance. Our work on attendance for disadvantaged pupils here at North is ongoing. All students’ attendance & punctuality to lessons is supported by our attendance team, our ‘on call’ system, the student welfare officer and the heads of year, as well as their tutors after Period 2. Attendance tutor competitions, visual aids of the importance of attendance & the recently upgraded Classcharts function for student, parent and tutor to see attendance figures.
- Pastoral support. Our pastoral team is experienced and proactive in supporting our students to ensure they all flourish. They work well alongside teachers, enriching the experience of all students and providing a solid foundation to allow all teachers to teach. Find the team here: North Bromsgrove High School & Sixth Form - The Pastoral Team and the Safeguarding Supporting families offer here: Supporting_Families_Offer_Sept_2023.pdf (northbromsgrove.worcs.sch.uk)
- Classcharts. Registers and safeguarding, seating plan creation with key demographics identified, as well as student specific notes to support the teacher understand how they learn, their reading ages, their MEGs and assigning positive and negative behaviour points. Teachers are supported by parents/carers at home, who have the Classcharts app on their device, to triangulate the school – student – home support.
- SISRA Analytics. All staff have access so they can regularly analyse their class performance and individual student performance. This can also help in tailoring intervention and enrichment programmes.
- Departmental specific trackers/QLA tools to support colleagues in tracking student attainment, strengths and weaknesses in units/topics of the curriculum, ultimately feeding into their delivery in the classroom, homework tasks, interventions, and driving students’ self-regulated learning and metacognitive skills.
- Professional teacher development. Coaching/mentoring through WalkThrus within departments, identifying specific clusters for each team and more recently the launch of the SSAT Embedding Formative Assessment 2-year project forming Teaching & Learning Communities across school. This is beneficial for the whole school community, retaining high quality teachers to provide excellent learning in the classroom.
- Educlubs/Evolve. When teachers are planning specific interventions, enrichments and/or external trips, this website enables communication with parents, taking registers and tracking. Ultimately any enrichment or intervention offered drives meaningful participation and success.
Further Information
All schools are required to demonstrate how they use Pupil Premium funding and the impact it the funding has had. Our online statement can be found here
For further details, please contact Mrs L Wakefield, Pupil Premium Lead – lwa@northbromsgrove.worcs.sch.uk