Pupil Premium Funding at Sandwich Junior School
What is Pupil Premium Funding?
The Pupil Premium funding is additional to main school funding and has been designed to overcome the current underlying inequalities between children eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their peers by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantage reaches the pupils who need it most.
The Pupil Premium was introduced in April 2011 and is allocated to schools to work with pupils who have been registered for free school meals at any point in the last six years.
Evidence shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds:
- generally face extra challenges in reaching their potential at school.
- often do not perform as well as their peers.
Eligibility and funding
Schools get pupil premium funding based on the number of pupils they have from the following groups.
Free school meals
Schools get £1,345 for every primary age pupil, or £955 for every secondary age pupil, who claims free school meals, or who has claimed free school meals in the last six years.
Your child could be eligible for Free School Meals if:
- your child attends a maintained school (most schools in Kent are maintained schools) or receive alternative education approved by Kent County Council.
You get any of the following:
- Universal Credit - if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get)
- Income Support
- Income-based Jobseeker's Allowance
- Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
- Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
- The guaranteed element of Pension Credit
- Child Tax Credit (provided you're not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
- Working Tax Credit run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit.
If you believe your child might be eligible, please follow the link below in order to complete your online application:
https://www.cloudforedu.org.uk/ofsm/kent/
Looked-after and previously looked-after children:
Schools get £2,345 for every pupil who has left local authority care through adoption, a special guardianship order or child arrangements order.
Local authorities get the same amount for each child they are looking after; they must work with the school to decide how the money is used to support the child's personal education plan.
Service Premium:
The Service Premium is not part of the Pupil Premium as the rules to attract the service premium are different.
Schools get £310 for every pupil with a parent who:
- is serving in HM Forces
- has retired on a pension from the Ministry of Defence
This funding is to help with pastoral support.
In 2016 SJS won a Pupil Premium Award, which reflects the work that we do to ensure gaps in vulnerable children's learning are closed.
DfE Guidance:
'Schools, headteachers and teachers will decide how to use the Pupil Premium allocation, as they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils.
'It is for schools to decide how the Pupil Premium, allocated to schools per FSM pupil, is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility.
'We know a good education is the key to improving young people's life chances, to enable them to progress into adulthood with the skills and confidence for success. The Pupil Premium will provide schools with the resources with which to address inequalities in the system and raise the attainment of those pupils from low income families.'
-Source DfE website