School Funding

What is the Pupil Premium?

Introduced in 2011, the pupil premium is a sum of money given to schools each year by the Government to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children.

This is based on research showing that children from low income families perform less well at school than their peers.

Often, children who are entitled to pupil premium face challenges such as poor language and communication skills, lack of confidence and issues with attendance and punctuality. The pupil premium is intended to directly benefit the children who are eligible, helping to narrow the gap between them and their classmates.

Is your child eligible?

Primary schools are given a pupil premium for:

• Children in Reception to Year 6 who are currently entitled to free school meals based on their family income: £1345 per pupil, per school year
• Children in Reception to Year 6 who were previously entitled to benefits-based free school meals, even if they're no longer eligible: £1345 per pupil, per school year, for six years after they stopped qualifying for free school meals
• Children in care: £2345 per pupil, per school year
• Children previously in care who have been adopted, or who have a special guardianship order, a child arrangements order or a residence order: £2345 per pupil, per school year
• Children recorded as being from service families: £310 per pupil, per school year

How is it spent?

Schools can choose how to spend their pupil premium money, as they are best placed to identify what would be of most benefit to the children who are eligible.

Common ways in which schools spend their pupil premium fund include:

• Extra one-to-one or small-group support for children within the classroom.
• Employing extra teaching assistants to work with classes.
• Running catch-up sessions before or after school, for example for children who need extra help with maths or literacy.
• Running a school breakfast club to improve attendance.
• Providing extra tuition for able children.
• Providing music lessons for children whose families would be unable to pay for them.
• Funding educational trips and visits.
• Paying for additional help such as speech and language therapy or family therapy.
• Funding English classes for children who speak another language at home.
• Investing in resources that boost children’s learning, such as laptops or tablets.

Often, all of the children in a class will reap some benefit from how the school spends its pupil premium: for example, if the money is used to fund an additional teaching assistant who works across the whole class, rather than providing one-to-one support.

But research shows that the fund does help to narrow gaps between disadvantaged children and their peers, particularly in English and maths.

Can you influence how the Pupil Premium is used?

There is no obligation for your school to consult you about how they use the money they claim for your child, although some schools may involve parents.

However, schools do have to show that they are using their pupil premium fund appropriately. This is measured through Ofsted inspections and annual performance tables showing the progress made by children who are eligible for pupil premium.

In addition, they have to publish details online, including how much money they have been allocated, how they intend to spend it, how they spent their previous year’s allocation and how it made a difference to the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

How to claim your child’s Pupil Premium

All children who currently qualify for free school meals based on their family circumstances are entitled to pupil premium. This applies if you receive any of the following benefits:

• Universal credit (provided you have a net income of £7400 or less)
• Income support
• Income-based jobseekers’ allowance
• Income-related employment and support allowance
• Support under Part IV of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
• The guaranteed element of state pension credit
• Child tax credit, provided that you are not also entitled to working tax credit and have an annual gross income of £16,190 or less

Children who are or have been in care, and children who have a parent who is or was in the armed forces, are also entitled to pupil premium.

In addition, pupils who have qualified for free school meals on the above grounds in the past, but are no longer eligible, continue to receive pupil premium for the next six years.

Schools are responsible for recording the children who are eligible for pupil premium in their annual school census - you don't have to do anything yourself, other than making sure you return any paperwork that relates to the benefits you receive or your child's entitlement to free school meals.

If your child qualifies for free school meals or has at any point in the past six years, it’s important that you tell their school – even if they're in Reception or KS1 and receive universal school meals for infant pupils, or are in KS2 and take a packed lunch – as this enables them to claim pupil premium.

DFE Guidance on Pupil Premium

Service Pupil Premium

What is the Catch Up Funding Premium? 

The government is providing funding to cover a one-off universal catch-up premium for the 2020 to 2021 academic year. It aims to support pupils to catch up for lost learning so schools can meet the curriculum expectations for the next academic year. 

DFE Guidance on the Catch-Up Premium

What is the School Sports' Premium?

The Government provides specific funding for schools called the Sports Premium which must be used to make additional and sustainable improvements to the quality of physical education (PE), physical activity and sport they offer.

Schools should use the premium to:

• develop or add to the PE, physical activity and sport activities that the school already offers
• build capacity and capability within the school to ensure that improvements made now will benefit pupils joining the school in future years

GOV.UK Guidance for the Sports Premium

What is the COVID-19 Recovery Premium? 

Following the COVID-19 pandemic and subsequent closure of schools, the government allocated funding to all schools to support pupils with the recovery process. In this page of our website and our COVID-19 Recovery Plan document we outline our school's strategies for recovery and our use of the funding. 

Funding  Allocation

Schools’ allocations will be calculated on a per pupil basis, providing each mainstream school with a total of £80 for each pupil in Reception through to Year 11. As this funding has been designed to mitigate the effects of the unique disruption caused by coronavirus (COVID-19), at this stage the grant will only be available for the 2020/2021 academic year. It will not be added to schools’ baselines in calculating future years’ funding allocations.

Use of funds

Schools should use this funding for specific activities to support their pupils to make up for potentially lost teaching during national lockdowns, in line with the guidance on curriculum expectations for the next academic year. 

Schools have the flexibility to spend their funding in the best way for their cohort and circumstances.

Accountability and Monitoring

As with all government funding, school leaders must be able to account for how this money is being used to achieve the central goal of schools getting back on track as quickly as possible. Given their role in ensuring schools spend funding appropriately and in holding schools to account for educational performance, governors should scrutinise schools’ approaches to catch-up from September 2020, including their plans for and use of this funding. This should include consideration of whether schools are spending this funding in line with their priorities, and ensuring appropriate transparency for parents (DfE guidance - Coronavirus (COVID-19) catch-up premium).