St Peter’s Pupil Premium Grant Expenditure

Context:

St Peter’s is a large primary school with approximately 630 pupils currently attending. The number of children entitled to pupil premium in school is relatively low and is well below the national average at around 10%. There are some fluctuations in year groups but most cohorts only have between 4 and 6 children who receive PP funding.

We are an inclusive and caring church school with strong Christian ethos. We have high aspirations for all our children, and staff, in and believe that excellence is standard for all members of the school community. We strongly believe that every child needs to experience success in their school career and that this can take many forms. We are determined to ensure that this is true for all our pupils and are using our pupil premium funding to ensure this happens for this group of children.

Recent Initiatives and Improvements:

We always work as a team to ensure we are providing rich, varied and strong learning experiences for our children. Recent initiatives and improvements at St Peter’s are:

• We are one of 34 DFE designated National English Hubs and have an expert team of reading teachers who are relentless in their ambition for every child to be a reader
• A broad and rich curriculum with specialist teaching 
• A strong whole school pedagogy - Excellence as Standard
• A whole-school understanding of social, economical and educational disadvantaged, informed by research from Marc Rowland and regularly reviewed against updated practice and best thinking. 2021 trust level review in line with Addressing Educational Disadvantage in Schools and Colleges: The Essex Way, Rowland et al.  
• Discrete vocabulary lessons targetted at addressing and reducing the vocabulary gap, in line with research by Alex Quigley and practice informed from Closing the Vocabulary Gap. 
• A carefully planned programme of educational visits ensuring that all children have the access to rich cultural experiences
• Increased attainment across school including 93% pass rate for phonics check in Y1, increased KS1 and KS2 attainment 
• A wide range of extra-curricular clubs on offer – on average 15 – 18 per week with over 300 children attending weekly
• A strong pastoral support team with 2 learning mentors  who support our most vulnerable children and families
• Phase Leader leadership system with weekly time out of class to develop expert teaching in all classrooms
• Extensive CPD for all our staff including national speakers such as Dylan Wiliam, Alex Quigley, Tom Sherrington and Marc Rowland to support our teaching approaches which are underpinned by robust evidence based research
• Collaboration with other schools and organisations including Boolean Maths Hub, other LSP schools, Lexonic and the National Literacy Trust
• Successful SIAMs inspection (2020) with 'excellent’ judgement
• Successful OFSTED Inspection (2023 with a ‘outstanding’ grading

However, we are not complacent and we are relentless in our drive for continual improvement. We welcome critique from other organisations seeking to improve our provision. This challenge allows us to continually develop our school and improve our standards further.

Objectives of the Pupil Premium Funding

When making decisions about how to spend the pupil premium we take into account our school context and the challenges faced. Common barriers for our PP children can be weaker language and communication skills, specific gaps in learning, lack of confidence, or less resources to engage in a range of activities or opportunities. There can be complex family challenges that may prevent children from accessing opportunities in line with their peers. The challenges are varied and our use of the PP funding meets these varied needs.

We look to support children through three strands:

• Identifying learning gaps to increase academic attainment and progress
• Behavioural and emotional support
• Increasing engagement in school life for pupils and families

Our key objective in using the pupil premium is to narrow the gap between pupil groups. Pupil premium is not a personal pot allocated to each child – we use it across the school to support the needs of all of our eligible children. This means they receive the support needed at different points of their educational career. As a school we show that we enable our children to make good progress but, reflecting a national trend,  our attainment and progress levels for free school meals and pupil premium children tend to be lower than their peers. Through targeted interventions and initiatives we are working to eliminate barriers to learning and progress. For children with lower attainment, we aim to ensure that they make accelerated progress in order to meet age related expectations or above as they move though the school.