What is Pupil Premium?

The pupil premium grant is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England. It’s a school-level grant that gives schools extra resources to help them meet challenges, including those arising from deprivation.

It’s allocated for schools to:

• improve the academic outcomes of disadvantaged pupils of all abilities
• close the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers across the country

Barnett Wood Infant School Pupil Premium Online Statement 

Barnett Wood receives funding for each disadvantaged pupil and uses the funding flexibly, in the best interests of each eligible pupil. We draw upon an evidence based approach to apply a ‘tiered’ approach to delivering their pupil premium strategy.

Tier 1: Improving Teaching

•  Schools arrange training and professional development for all their staff to improve the impact of teaching and learning for pupils.

Tier 2: Academic support

• Schools should decide on the main issues stopping their pupils from succeeding at school and use the pupil premium to buy extra help.

Tier 3: Wider approaches

This may include non-academic use of the pupil premium such as:

• school breakfast clubs
• music lessons for disadvantaged pupils
• help with the cost of educational trips or visits
• speech and language therapy

Schools may find using the pupil premium in this way helps to:

• increase pupils’ confidence and resilience
• encourage pupils to be more aspirational
• benefit non-eligible pupils

Please read the information below which gives details of our Pupil Premium Grant and how we allocate the funding.

Pupil Premium Strategy at Barnett Wood Infant School

At Barnett Wood, we consider the following four-step approach when developing and sustaining our Pupil Premium Strategy:

    1. Diagnosing our pupils' needs

    2. Using strong evidence to support our strategy

    3. Implement our strategy

    4. Monitor and evaluate our strategy

Pupil Premium is carefully targeted once the needs of individuals have been diagnosed or assessed. When diagnosing needs, we take into account a wide range of internal data and information, including:

• Attendance data and levels of persistent absence;
• Teacher feedback on pupils’ levels of engagement and participation;
• Behaviour incidences and exclusions data;
• Information on wellbeing, mental health and safeguarding;
• Access to technology and curricular materials.

We use strong evidence to support our strategy and utilise a broad array of external evidence to inform our decision making, alongside the expert knowledge we have of the pupils in our care. For instance, after identifying pupils in need of targeted reading interventions through standardised assessments, we seek relevant and robust evidence on which approaches are most likely to provide appropriate and effective solutions, such as particular phonics or reading comprehension programmes. Our experienced LSAs have additional hours in order to focus on appropriate support interventions which mainly focus on extra support for English and Mathematics skills and also pupils' mental health and well being. Our aim is to make sure these children attain as well as their peers and this is monitored closely through internal tracking and regular professional dialogue between practitioners, teachers and the headteacher. This funding has also been used to support extracurricular activities and resources. Some children have benefited from extra swimming lessons, joining our after school football, dance, reading and cooking clubs and the provision of support during holidays to join clubs.  

Successful implementation of a pupil premium strategy is a carefully staged process that takes time, rather than being a one-off event. The strategy is aligned with other school development plans and existing practices to ensure a sustained impact. We will scrutinise the evidence that has informed our strategy with a focus on effective implementation.

In 2022-23, our plan is to continue the excellent support and interventions that are proving successful for our Pupil Premium children. We also plan to provide Emotional Literacy Support Assistants  (ELSA) to meet the social, emotional and health needs of our pupil premium pupils. This includes children who are eligible for free school meals, children who are in Local authority care and children who are adopted or have a special guardianship order. 

We have recruited additional Learning Support Assistants which enhances the support we are able to provide. Children receive individual support through targeted literacy, numeracy, speech and language and ELSA  sessions. The impact of these sessions are regularly discussed with teachers and the headteacher and successes are shared with parents and children.