Pupil Premium
The pupil premium grant 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.
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?
Schools can choose how to spend their pupil premium money, within the requirements of the conditions of grant, as they are best placed to identify what would be of most benefit to the children who are eligible. Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils and schools are not required to spend all of the allocated grant on eligible pupils. 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.
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.
Apply for free school meals here
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 let us know – 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 us to claim pupil premium.
These documents outline how the funding is used to support children at Warfield.