Pupil Premium

Pupil Premium is received from central government according to the number of students on roll who have been entitled to Free School Meals at any time in the last six years or who have been looked after continuously for a period of 6 months.

Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds have been amongst the greatest negative impact due to  the pandemic. Pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds lost, on average, approximately 2.2 months in reading amongst both primary and secondary aged pupils, and around 4.5 months in mathematics for primary aged pupils. This means that disadvantaged pupils lost about half a month more than non-disadvantaged pupils in reading and around a month more in primary mathematics. (DfE June 2021)

Our overall intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and achieve high attainment across the curriculum – particularly in EBacc subjects.

At St Paul’s we aim to narrow the Attainment and Progress Gap between Disadvantaged pupils and non-Disadvantaged pupils by focusing on Quality First teaching. Therefore, high quality teaching is at the heart of every faculty’s curriculum intent, with a focus on areas in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support. The Quality First Teaching approach is proven to have the greatest impact on narrowing the disadvantage attainment gap and at the same time will benefit the non-disadvantaged pupils at St Paul’s.

The Pupil Premium strategy at St Paul’s is all-inclusive and is integral to wider plans of the Academy. From the point of education recovery, we have utilised the National Tutoring Programme for pupils whose education has been worst affected. This includes non-disadvantaged pupils.

Our approach will be responsive to common challenges and individual needs. Therefore, we have adopted five main areas to work on: reinforcement of St Paul’s Teaching and Learning principles, Assessment, Feedback, Learning Outside the Classroom and Reading. The approaches we have adopted complement each other to help pupils excel. To ensure they are effective we will:

• ensure ALL pupils are challenged in the work that they’re set
• identify early the students needing intervention and act immediately
• adopt a whole school approach in which all staff take responsibility for disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes and raise expectations of what they can achieve
• Use all available data to monitor the progress or lack of progress and implement ways to celebrate and consolidate successes

Click here to download the Pupil Premium Strategy Plan