Pupil Premium, PE Funding and Covid Catch Up Premium

Pupil Premium

The Pupil Premium is designed to ensure that funding to tackle disadvantaged families reaches the pupils who need it most. The funding is allocated to Local Authorities and schools with pupils from Reception to Y11 who are eligible for free school meals (FSM), are looked after, or have parents currently in the Armed Forces. 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

At St Mary’s we support all our pupils; we are committed to ensuring that the teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all pupils, in particular those of vulnerable or socially disadvantaged pupils. One of our key priorities is that any gaps in the performance of vulnerable pupils, and that of other pupils, is narrowed and ultimately closed. We do this by providing high quality classroom teaching supplemented by interventions to support vulnerable learners, as and when required. The School and Governing Body monitor the impact of all spending and interventions, including the Pupil Premium.

The progress of all pupils, including pupils identified as being vulnerable (SEND, FSM, EAL, LAC) is rigorously and regularly tracked. Regular Pupil Progress meetings between teachers and the Headteacher focus specifically on the progress of vulnerable pupils. Actions and interventions are agreed and the impact of these assessed termly. The staff, including the SENCO, work closely together on planning the provision for vulnerable pupils and monitor the impact of all interventions.

In 2024-25 the total amount of Pupil Premium Funding allocated to St Mary’s will be £15,140.00 The funding will be used to fund or contribute towards the funding of:

• SENCO training and training for staff to deliver interventions
• Dynamo Maths Online Intervention Programme
• Maths and English Booster groups
• Teaching Assistants to undertake intervention groups
• Books for the library to encourage reluctant readers
• New reading scheme books, including phonics books
• IDL Dyslexia Online Intervention Programme
• Staff cover to enable peer mentoring to improve the quality of teaching and learning
• Funding or part-funding of additional curriculum opportunities for pupils, such as educational visits, clubs, music lessons and residential trips.

PE Funding

All young people should have the opportunity to live healthy and active lives. A positive experience of sport and physical activity at a young age can build a lifetime habit of participation and is central to meeting the government’s ambitions for a world-class education system.

Physical activity has numerous benefits for children and young people’s physical health, as well as their mental wellbeing (increasing self-esteem and emotional wellbeing and lowering anxiety and depression), and children who are physically active are happier, more resilient and more trusting of their peers. Ensuring that pupils have access to sufficient daily activity can also have wider benefits for pupils and schools, improving behaviour as well as enhancing academic achievement. The PE and sport premium can help primary schools to achieve this aim, providing primary schools with £320m of government funding to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of the PE, physical activity and sport offered through their core budgets. It is allocated directly to schools so they have the flexibility to use it in the way that works best for their pupils. For 2024 / 2025 we will receive £16,320 of PE funding.

This will be used for:

£6000 -CPD covering professional development, mentoring, training, access to external resources

£4000 – swimming lessons for all pupils in school over the course of the year

£2000 – service of the school mini bus to get to sport competitions and swimming lessons

£4000 – Use of external coaches to engage the expertise of external coaches to offer pupils a wider variety of sports. Governing bodies, trustees or proprietors should seek assurance that providers have appropriate safeguarding and child protection policies and procedures in place, including inspecting these as needed.

Currently, all our year 6 children (100%) can swim competently for at least a distance of 25 metres. They can use a range of strokes effectively and they can perform safe self-rescue in different water-based situations.

Covid Catch-Up Grants

The government announced £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up lost time after school closure. This is especially important for the most vulnerable and disadvantaged backgrounds. At St. Mary’s, Chipping, we have received a payment of £2174.00 for 2023 to 2024. The governing body of the school discussed this at length and it was decided that the funding would be allocated to staffing ensuring that there was sufficient support in all of our classes. This would mean that all children would be able to access the support they require either in a 1-1 situation or a small group learning group. All classes in school have a full-time teacher and a part-time TA. Our pre-school and reception class has a full time teacher and a full time TA with an additional TA to cover SEN support.