Focus on 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 should publish a pupil premium strategy
The Department for Education (DfE) has published guidance for what maintained schools should 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.
As part of our Schools Website Checklist, this template (which is based on the DfE's guidance), can be used to check your school's compliance.
Pupil Premium and Ofsted
Ofsted’s inspection handbook explains that inspectors look at how well governors hold school leaders to account for using the pupil premium effectively. They also compare the attainment and progress data for pupils eligible for the grant with data for other pupils.
Inspectors can recommend an external review of the use of the pupil premium if they think there are issues with the school’s provision for disadvantaged pupils.
The extracts below are taken from Ofsted inspection reports from Hertfordshire schools. Although isolated quotes are better read in the context of the full report, these give a flavour of the range of comments that schools receive.
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Reports from schools with a ‘good’ Ofsted judgement
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Reports from schools with a ‘satisfactory/requires improvement’ or ‘inadequate’ Ofsted judgement
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The money available through the pupil premium for supporting pupils is well-used to provide staffing and other resources, including the development of nurture work.
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The governing body has not checked on how the extra funding provided through the pupil premium is being spent nor evaluated its impact.
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It (the governing body) deploys and monitors the use of the money available through the pupil premium well and has a good understanding of its impact, especially checking the success of extra staffing.
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The school is failing to promote equality of opportunity. Those pupils supported by the pupil premium make inadequate progress and gaps in achievement with other pupils are not closing fast enough.
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Pupil premium funding is used effectively to accelerate learning for pupils known to be eligible for free school meals. It is used to pay for them to attend Saturday morning club which is held in school. It is run and staffed by school staff and makes a valuable contribution to the development of pupils’ communication and social skills.
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Pupil premium funding is used to support students who are not doing as well as they could, with disadvantaged students being a high priority. For example, students who find mathematics difficult are catching up because additional support is provided. Similarly, the funding enables five students to benefit from extra music tuition. A new member of staff has been appointed to help students who might have previously needed support off-site. However, students from less well-off families do not yet do as well as others because the funding is not used exclusively for them and their progress is not checked thoroughly enough.
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This link provides useful information on The Pupil Premium - What Ofsted Looks For
FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS
Is there a deadline for publishing pupil premium information?
Regulation 2, paragraph 4 of The School Information (England) (Amendment) Regulations 2012 explains:
….the governing body must arrange for the information published on the website to be updated as soon as is reasonably practicable following a change to that information and, in any event, at least annually.
Schools are required to update the information outlined in the regulations every year. The expectation is that this will be done before 1st September. However, the DfE understands it is not always possible for schools to achieve this, and that the requirement for information to be updated “as soon as is “reasonably practicable” is designed to accommodate this. However, if a school does not have the most up-to-date information on its website for each new academic year, it should have a good reason for this.
Should we have a link governor for pupil premium?
Link governors are a link to something outside the governing board, which could include a specific area such as the pupil premium.
Link governors report information back to the governing board but it is up to individual governing boards to decide whether they want to use this system. It is important to remember that appointing a named (link) governor does not absolve the governing board of its responsibilities.
Responsibility for ongoing monitoring of pupil premium impact could instead be delegated to a committee because there is likely to be more scope in committee meetings to robustly and collectively evaluate pupil premium spending. This does not mean that there should be a separate committee for the pupil premium – pupil premium should be a regular item on the agenda of a relevant committee that is already established.
The most important thing to remember is that oversight of pupil premium spending is a responsibility for the full governing board. Whatever approach is taken, the governing board will need to ensure it receives reports on the pupil premium on a regular basis.
Is there a model / template action plan available to use?
The Teaching Schools Council has published templates to support schools in developing and presenting their pupil premium strategies. (Use of the templates is voluntary).