Pupil Premium Grant

At St Mark’s we want to foster a lifelong love of learning among all of our children. Pupil Premium money is spent on supporting designated children in ways carefully matched to their needs.

In 2015-16 we focused the Pupil Premium Funding on providing extra teachers in Literacy and Maths, to make teaching for all children more targeted, due to smaller and more closely matched ability groups, and therefore more effective. Smaller groups meant that teachers could give feedback and respond faster to individual needs. The added advantage was that children were not taken out of other lessons which they may be much more confident in and have greater enjoyment of.

This year we have also used Pupil Premium funding to train a staff member in the THRIVE intervention. This has been in operation through the year and has been very successful.

The funding is also used to support qualifying families with off-site or extra-curricular learning.

The data at the end of the year shows that Pupil Premium pupils with no underlying SEND were equalling or exceeding the test scores of the non-Pupil Premium children in their cohorts.

This year the funding is significantly less due to fewer pupils qualifying. Instead of extra teachers we are employing an extra teaching assistant every morning in the class with the highest concentration of eligible pupils.

We are using the THRIVE intervention and are funding the Practitioner for one afternoon per week.

All Teaching Assistants have had Phonological Awareness training and will run this intervention with pupils identified from screening.

The projected cost from our 16/17 budget is - £13,000

As last year, this provision will be reviewed informally half termly and by looking at results of assessments termly.

Detailed breakdowns of impact on pupils targeted are available to governors but, as we are a small school with small cohorts, greater detail than this is not appropriate on the website.