What is The Pupil Premium?
The Pupil Premium is additional funding that schools receive on top of their main funding. It is targeted at pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds to ensure they can benefit from the same opportunities as pupils from less deprived families. This is one of the current government’s key education policies and is based on findings that show that, as a group, children who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in time have consistently lower educational attainment than those who have never been eligible.
The premium is worth £1,345 per pupil and goes to pupils who at any point in the past 6 years have been in receipt of Free School Meals (FSM); £2,345 goes to any student who has been continuously looked after for the past six months or who has been adopted from care under the Adoption and Children Act 2002 or who has left care under a Special Guardianship or Residence Order; finally £310 goes to students whose parent/parents are currently serving in the armed forces or are in receipt of a pension from the MoD.
Schools can decide how to use the Pupil Premium funding in order to improve educational attainment of children from less privileged backgrounds and therefore Pupil Premium expenditure is monitored closely as schools are accountable for the impact of the money spent.
The Pupil Premium has the potential to have a great impact on the attainment and future life chances of pupils. |