What is the Pupil Premium?
Pupil Premium is additional funding received by schools to help each pupil from disadvantaged families or background. The government decided to deliver funding straight to schools for certain groups of eligible children; the main purpose is to target disadvantaged and vulnerable children with those eligible for free school meals and those looked after by the state. Children of service families were added to the list through concerns raised about the potential impact of regular school moves and issues around deployment.
It is allocated to schools based on the number of children who are currently registered for free school meals. It's important to know that a pupil does not need to have a school dinner, but the parents / carers must have been approved as meeting the criteria by West Sussex County Council.
It also includes:
Pupils who have been registered for free school meals at any point in the last six years but no longer fit the criteria.
Children who have been 'looked after' continuously for more than six months.
Why is this funding available?
The Government believes that the Pupil Premium, which is additional to main school funding, is the best way to address 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.
In most cases the Pupil Premium is allocated to schools and is clearly identifiable. It is for schools to decide how the Pupil Premium is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for individual pupils.
Schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium as they see fit. However they will be held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support pupils from low-income or forces families and to publish online information about how they have used the Premium.