What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil premium is a sum of money given to local authorities and schools each year by the Government to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children. The government publish guidance about pupil premium on their website. The guidance explains that pupil premium funding is extra funding from the government for publicly funded schools in England to help them improve the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.

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 and their wealthier peers, by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.

Schools receive pupil premium for the following pupils:

• Every primary age pupil in the school who is eligible for free school meals at the time information is collected, or has been eligible for free school meals at any point in the previous six years.
• Every pupil in the school who has left local authority care through adoption, a special guardianship order or child arrangements order.
• Every child with a parent in the regular armed forces.

What is the intended impact?

To ensure that pupil premium is focused on effective approaches to raising the educational attainment of disadvantaged pupils, schools must spend their pupil premium grant (excluding service pupil premium) on evidence-informed activities in line with the ‘menu of approaches’ set by the Department for Education (DfE).

The menu helps schools allocate spending across the following areas:

• Developing high-quality teaching, for example through professional development and recruitment and retention.

• Providing targeted academic support, such as one-to-one or small group tuition.
• Tackling non-academic barriers to academic success, such as difficulties with attendance, behaviour and social and emotional wellbeing.

How is it used?

Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils, and schools do not have to spend pupil premium so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. Instead, schools have the freedom to spend the pupil premium grant in a way they think will best support the raising of attainment for these pupils.