Pupil Premium & Year 7 Catch Up Premium

The Pupil Premium Grant

 

The Pupil Premium Grant was introduced in April 2011 to provide additional funding to support children who are looked after or have left Local Authority care and those from low income families, including those eligible for Free School Meals.  It is also awarded to children whose parents serve with the armed forces or that are eligible for a military pension.

We encourage parents whose children are eligible to receive Free School Meals, to apply to receive them, so that they are also awarded the Pupil Premium Grant (PPG).  If you are unsure whether you are eligible to apply for Free School Meals, please see the criteria below (correct as of 20/11/2019):

Your child may be able to get free school meals if you get any of the following:

• Income Support
• income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
• income-related Employment and Support Allowance
• support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• the guaranteed element of Pension Credit
• Child Tax Credit (provided you’re not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
• Working Tax Credit run-on – paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
• Universal Credit – if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get)

Please be aware that the following benefits do not qualify for Income Related Free School Meals: Contributions based Jobseeker’s Allowance, Contributions based Employment & Support Allowance, Working Tax Credit, Invalidity Benefit, Disability Living Allowance, Housing Benefit, Council Tax Benefit and Child Benefit.

Children who get paid these benefits directly, instead of through a parent or guardian, can also get free school meals.

Your child may also get free school meals if you get any of these benefits and your child is both:

• younger than the compulsory age for starting school
• in full-time education

Please see Wakefield Council website for more details and how to apply or contact them on 01924 305061.

 

Essentially the funding is awarded as a ‘top-up’ to assist schools in overcoming the additional barriers that these children may face.  As the barriers are as unique and varied as the children themselves, there isn’t a formula for using this funding and it is for schools and academies to decide how best to use the grant to meet the needs of its students.  Some funding will be used for individual, personalised interventions and some may be used to provide collective support or resources.

 

Accountability comes in two key areas:

1. Schools and academies are required to report how they have allocated the PPG each year.  This is done through the academy website.  The allocation of funding should be regularly assessed to ensure that all spending has had at least the intended impact.
2. Schools are required to track and to be able to explain the progress made by all students that are eligible for hte PPG.  This relates to academic progress, as well as the attendance and behaviour of these students.  All tracking is benchmarked against the progress made by students that do not receive the PPG so that the academy can monitor how duccessful it has been at ‘narrowing the gap’.

 

 

The Year 7 Catch Up Premium (CuP)

 

The Year 7 Catch Up Premium is a funding stream that closely matches the Pupil Premium Grant.  The key difference is in the eligibility criteria.

 

As the name suggests the Year 7 CuP is only available to students in Year 7.  It is awarded to those students that have failed to secure the National benchmark of a Level 4 in either their reading and/or mathematics in their Key Stage 2 SATs.  The funding is awarded to schools to fund interventions to assist these students in ‘catching up’ with their peers, ensuring that neither literacy or numeracy are barriers to progress.

 

Our commitment

 

The Featherstone Academy is determined to establish aspiration in the mindset of every young person; to teach them how to take responsibility for themselves and, through leadership, to take responsibility for others; we endeavour to take pride in ourselves, our school and our community at all times and make it central to everything we say and do.

 

As such, the academy is committed to investing funding from the Pupil Premium and the Year 7 Catch Up Premium, to provide opportunities for all students to achieve their full potential.  We are committed to using the additional funding to ensure that eligible students perform at least as well as other eligible students nationally.

 

We aspire to develop support mechanisms that enable students receiving additional funding, to perform as well as those that do not receive the funding.  In doing so, we hope to remove the gap, not just narrow it.

 

The Featherstone Academy will monitor and regularly assess the efficacy of any strategy that has been funded using either the PPG or the Year 7 CuP.  Frank and honest assessment will shape future planning and future spending.

 

The data below provides the relevant information about our school roll and the funding received:

Students on-roll in Years 7 to 11 in 2018-19	358
Number of students currently receiving Free School Meals	79
Number of students that are not currently receiving Free School Meals but have received Free School Meals in the past 6 years	52
Number of students that are Looked After (CLA)	3
Number of students that have left Local Authority Care	0
Total amount of Pupil Premium Grant	£129,385