Every school has a duty to ensure that every individual child is given the best possible chance of achieving their potential. At Sandymoor Ormiston Academy, we have uniformly high expectations of all learners.
The Pupil Premium is a government initiative providing additional funding to schools in order to raise the attainment of children from disadvantaged backgrounds and close the gap between them and their peers. Nationally, statistics indicate that pupils in receipt of free school meals don’t achieve as well as other pupils.
The additional funding received by the school is based upon the number of pupils eligible for free school meals at any time in the preceding six years, which, the Department for Education uses as an indicator of disadvantage. Schools also receive funding for children who have been looked after or adopted as well as for children of service personnel. The aim of the funding is to enable schools to provide appropriate support for these pupils.
How will the Pupil Premium Funding be used at Sandymoor Ormiston Academy?
The Department for Education does not dictate how schools should spend the Pupil Premium funding; schools should use strategies that they know will support their pupils to increase their attainment, and ‘narrow the gap’ between them and their peers.
In making provision for socially disadvantaged pupils, we recognise that not all pupils who receive free school meals will be disadvantaged. We also recognise that not all pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are registered or qualify for free school meals. We therefore reserve the right to allocate Pupil Premium funding to support any pupil or groups of pupils we have identifies as being disadvantaged or vulnerable.
We believe that support for Pupil Premium learners is at its most effective when it is tailored to the specific needs of that individual. However, some examples of how Sandymoor Ormiston Academy expects to use Pupil Premium can be found in our plan below.
Our Pupil Premium strategy is reviewed every term and the official impact of spend is assessed every September for the previous year.