Schools receive a payment, or Pupil Premium funding, for each child who is registered for free school meals and those who have been in continuous care for six months or more. From April 2012, the Pupil Premium was extended to include children who have been eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) at any point in the last six years.  

The Government believe that the Pupil Premium funding is an effective way to ensure disadvantaged pupils benefit from the same educational opportunities as pupils from wealthier families. 

Schools, head teachers and teachers will decide how to use the Pupil Premium allocation, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils. It is for schools to decide how the Pupil Premium, allocated to schools per FSM pupil, is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility. DFE website 

As from September 2012, Schools and Academies are expected to publish information about how the Pupil Premium Grant has been allocated. This policy outlines how the Nottingham Girls’ Academy will implement this requirement to ensure parents are informed of the progress and attainment of pupils entitled to the premium. 

Principles

• We are committed to ‘closing the gap’ between all pupils and any specific cohort or group of pupils. 
• We will ensure that teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all of our pupils. 
• We will ensure that appropriate provision is made for pupils who belong to vulnerable groups; this includes ensuring that the needs of pupils are adequately assessed and addressed. 
• We reserve the right to allocate the Pupil Premium Grant to support any pupil or group of pupils we have legitimately identified as being disadvantaged. 
• Funds will be allocated following an analysis which will identify priority groups or individuals.  
• We will use evidence based approaches and a range of data to inform interventions  
• We will ensure the FSM learners benefit from all school wide activities as well befitting from discrete and bespoke interventions  

In making provision for socially disadvantaged children, we recognise that not all the children who receive FSM will be socially disadvantaged.

We also recognise that not all children who are socially disadvantaged are registered or qualify for FSM.

The Education Endowment Foundation

We are committed to using evidence-based approaches and a range of data to inform interventions. In order to support this commitment, we utilise research carried out by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) to ensure our decisions with regards to interventions, are supported by evidence. The EEF is an independent charity dedicated to breaking the link between family income and educational achievement and as such support teachers by providing independent, evidence-based resource designed to improve practice and boost learning. The EEF evaluate the impact of intervention in terms of the additional months' progress the evidence suggests pupils can make as a result of an approach being used, taking average pupil progress over a year as a benchmark.

For example, the 'Feedback' strand in the ‘Teaching and Learning Toolkit’ shows that improving the quality of feedback provided to pupils has had an average attainment impact of +8 months. This means that students in a class where high quality feedback is given will make +8 months more progress over a year compared to students in a control class where feedback is of a standard quality.

Our Pupil Premium Statements can be found below: