What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil Premium is funding allocated to schools for the specific purpose of boosting the attainment of pupils from low-income families. Funding is based on children who have registered for a free school meal at any point in the last 6 years, children who are in care or adopted, and children whose parents are currently serving in the armed forces.

The Early Years Pupil Premium (EYPP) is additional funding for early years settings to improve the education they provide for disadvantaged 3 and 4-year-olds.

Our philosophy

At Fairfield Primary School, we value the abilities and achievements of all our pupils, and are committed to providing each pupil with the best possible environment for learning. We recognise that each child is unique and will have different needs, which may well vary throughout their time in the school. We have planned to spend our Pupil Premium funding to try to give them all the support that they need to be happy, confident and life-long learners. We believe in maximising the use of the Pupil Premium Grant by utilising a long-term strategy aligned to the SIP. This enables us to implement a blend of short, medium and long-term interventions, and align pupil premium use with wider school improvements and improving readiness to learn.

Our implementation process

We believe in selecting a small number of priorities and giving them the best chance of success. We also believe in evidence-based interventions and learning from our experiences, which is why we utilise annual light-touch reviews to ensure our approach is effective and we can cease or amend interventions that are not having the intended impact.

We will:

Explore

  • Identify a key priority that we can address
  • Systematically explore appropriate programmes and practices
  • Examine the fit and feasibility with the school

Prepare

  • Develop a clear, logical and well-specified plan
  • Assess the readiness of the school to deliver the plan
  • Make practical preparations

Deliver

  • Support staff and solve any problems using a flexible leadership approach
  • Reinforce initial training with follow-on support
  • Drive faithful adoption and intelligent adaption

Sustain

  • Plan for sustaining and scaling the intervention from the outset
  • Continually acknowledge, support and reward good implementation practices
  • Treat scale-up as a new implementation process

Our tiered approach

To prioritise spending, we have adopted a tiered approach to define our priorities and ensure balance. Our tiered approach comprises three categories:

  1. Teaching
  2. Targeted academic support
  3. Wider strategies

Within each category, we have chosen two or three interventions. This focused approach ensures the best chance of success for each intervention.

  1. Quality of teaching

Good and Outstanding teaching is the most important lever schools have to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Using our Pupil Premium funding to improve teaching quality benefits all pupils and has a particularly positive effect on our children eligible for Pupil Premium.

Our priority at Fairfield Primary School is to ensure that a highly effective teacher is in front of every class, and that every teacher is supported to keep improving.

Encouraging self-led professional development: facilitating regular CPD opportunities for all teaching staff.

  • Professional development: half-termly coaching sessions/subject leader monitoring activities to support teachers/TAs, with a particular emphasis on Maths, English/vocabulary and wider curriculum development.
  • Professional development for staff by participating in targeted training courses and INSET, both in-person and via our virtual CPD platform.

 

  1. Targeted academic support

At Fairfield Primary School, we consider carefully how our staff are deployed to provide specific targeted academic support either in a one-to-one or small group situation.

  • Structured interventions: introducing speech and language interventions for pupils with poor oral language and communication skills and introducing a structured intervention for phonics.
  • Small group tuition: introducing targeted English and Maths teaching for pupils who are below age-related expectations. Creating additional teaching and learning opportunities using support staff by expanding the school day.

 

  1. Wider strategies

Here at Fairfield Primary School, we aim to focus on significant social and emotional support to help pupils in our care and ensure that all pupils have opportunities to participate in wider enrichment activities to enhance cultural capital.

  • Social and emotional support: further strengthening our pastoral care provision, including all children participating in well-being workshops to aid well-being.
  • Providing a wide variety of enrichment experiences for all pupils.

Pupil Premium: Our Current Strategy 2023-2026

Pupil Premium: Historical Documents

School contact

If you have any questions, or need support with applying for the Pupil Premium Grant, please contact the Deputy Headteacher and Pupil Premium Leader, Mr. J. Gale or click the following link:

https://www.cumbria.gov.uk/childrensservices/schoolsandlearning/freeschoolmeals.asp