Pupil Premium – What is the Pupil Premium
The pupil premium is additional funding given to state-funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and other pupils.
The government does not prescribe what the pupil premium should be spent on, as it says schools are best placed to assess what additional provision their pupils need. However, schools are held accountable for how they use this funding to support the pupils eligible for it.
All schools must publish a pupil premium strategy
The Department for Education (DfE) has published guidance for what maintained schools must publish online.
The DfE guidance says that maintained schools must publish a strategy on their use of the pupil premium. It is no longer a requirement to publish a ‘pupil premium statement’.
For the current academic year, the strategy must include:
- Your school’s pupil premium grant allocation amount
- A summary of the main barriers to educational achievement faced by eligible pupils at the school
- How you’ll spend the pupil premium to address those barriers and the reasons for that approach
- How you’ll measure the impact of the pupil premium
- The date of the next review of the school’s pupil premium strategy
For the previous academic year, you must include details of:
- How you spent the pupil premium allocation
- The impact of the expenditure on eligible and other pupils
The guidance says:
- Pupil premium funding is allocated for each financial year, but the information you publish online should refer to the academic year, as this is how parents understand the school system.
- As you won’t know allocations for the end of the academic year (April to July), you should report on the funding up to the end of the financial year and update it when you have all the figures.
The requirements for what Academies must publish online are set out in their funding agreements.
The DfE's guidance for academies says that, regardless of what your funding agreement requires you to publish, the Department recommends publishing the same information as maintained schools, listed above.
Governors are expected to know how the funding is being used and in particular what impact this is having on the pupils who receive the funding.
Governors must remember that not all the pupils receiving Pupil Premium will be struggling with school work. The pupil premium ‘group’ may also contain high-achievers or those with the potential to achieve highly and it’s important that the school has sufficiently high expectations of all pupils.
Interventions put in place should be properly matched to individual needs in order to allow all pupils to achieve their best.
Most governing boards now have a designated governor for Pupil Premium who will report to the remaining governors and this may make monitoring more effective and focused.
We have listed some questions that any governor could ask regarding Pupil Premium.
Pupil Premium Questions for Governors to ask?
- What is the PP gap in school? (for English + Maths, Reading, Writing, Maths?)
- How does this compare with National? How has this changed over time? How are we tracking the changes?
- Who are the PP pupils in school? How many? Boys/girls by year group? What is the overlap with other groups – EAL, BME, G&T etc.?
- How much PP funding do we receive? Can you detail how it is used? Who decides how it will be spent? Is it used to support pupils other than PP?
- What do we do to encourage parents/carers to claim Free School Meals (even if they don’t use the meal)? Do they understand how much money can benefit the school and their child?
- Does our school website meet the requirements for reporting on Pupil Premium?
- How are Governors involved in monitoring Pupil Premium? Do we have a designated governor assigned to Pupil Premium?
- What interventions/actions has the school used to narrow the gap? What was their impact? How was it measured? What is the most effective strategy the school has used to reduce the PP gap?
- Do class teachers know who the PP pupils are in their class? Do teachers have PP targets as part of their performance management? What support do teachers receive in order to address PP gaps?
- Do we have Pupil Premium pupils who achieve national expectations but who ought to be achieving more highly? What does the school do for them? Could more be done?