Pupil Premium
In 2011-12 the Government introduced an additional grant called Pupil Premium Funding. This was paid to schools, via the Local Authority, in addition to their Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG) funding. This additional funding was intended to be a specific grant that would help schools provide for their most vulnerable and deprived students in a more focused fashion.
The Government believes that the pupil premium, which is additional to main school funding, is the best way to address the current underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.
The main aims in introducing Pupil Premium Funding were to provide more direct funding for deprived and vulnerable students with the specific aims of:
- increasing social mobility
- enabling more vulnerable and deprived students from disadvantaged backgrounds to access the best education in their local schools
- helping to reduce the attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving pupils.
Use of Pupil premium funding at Blessed George Napier School
The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers. The grant may be spent in a number of ways including ‘for the educational benefit of pupils registered at that school’. “Schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit” Ofsted 2013. The school must determine how best to support students so that any attainment gaps are minimised. ‘The grant does not have to be completely spent by schools in the financial year beginning 1 April 2015; some or all of it may be carried forward to future financial years.’
Please see pdf below for further information.