Pupil Premium

The Pupil Premium grant funding was introduced in April 2011, with the aim of raising the educational outcomes of disadvantaged children by closing the attainment gap to their more affluent peers. This funding is paid directly to state funded schools.

Paddox Primary School uses this funding to enable our disadvantaged children to reach their full potential academically, whilst also tackling non-academic barriers to success, such as poor attendance, behavioural problems, and lack of social or emotional wellbeing.

Pupil Premium funding is allocated to schools based on:

• the number of children in receipt of Targeted Free School Meals or who have been recorded as eligible for FSM at any point in the last 6 years;
• the number of children who are ‘Looked-after’ by the local authority or who have been ‘Previously Looked After’ by the local authority and have now left care through adoption, a special guardianship order or a child arrangement order;
• the number of Service Children with a parent serving in the regular armed forces, those registered as a service child in any census over the past 6 years, or those whose parent died while serving in the armed forces.

To ensure that pupil premium spending is focused on effective approaches in raising the educational attainment of disadvantaged children, schools must spend their funding on evidence- based activities as outlined in research by the Education Endowment Foundation. Schools are able to decide how they spend their funding as they are best placed to identify what would benefit the children most in their school through developing a Pupil Premium strategy document.

At Paddox, we have developed a three-year strategic approach which outlines our key priorities and is reviewed annually in terms of success and areas for further development.

As a school, we allocate our spending across the following three areas:

• developing high-quality teaching, for example through professional development and recruitment and retention
• providing targeted academic support, such as small group intervention
• tackling non-academic barriers to academic success, such as difficulties with attendance, behaviour and social and emotional well-being.