Thorpedene Primary School

Pupil PremiumGrantRationale: Academic year 2017/18

At Thorpedene, we seek to ensure the effectiveness of our use of the Pupil Premium funding. We recognise that barriers to achievement take a variety of forms and look for individual ways to support each child to achieve their very best. We do this by offering our children a wide range of opportunities and ensuring that these are accessible for everyone.We work with our families and colleagues to make sure everyonehashigh aspirations for all pupils. In addition, we make use of educational research such as The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit, to guide us on how best to use the school’s resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

We identify the barriers to learning for our disadvantaged pupils and have carefully planned our strategy report based on these barriers. We recognise that there are many reasons our disadvantaged pupils need additional support from SEND to AMA, family circumstances, life experiences and social and emotional aspects of learning. Each pupil receives additional support individually tailored to their needs.

Throughout the academic year 2017-2018 we are ensuring that we use our Pupil Premium funding to achieve the following:

  • Diminishing the difference between pupil groups–we will be using qualified teachers to provide targeted support for all Pupil Premium children, based on the findings of robust pupil progress meetings which take place throughout the year. These are reviewed on a regular basis to ensure maximum impact. These targeted intervention sessions continue to improve pupil's basic English and Maths skills as well as ensuring all pupils can reach their full potential.
  • Developing successful learners – we will have a whole school focus on ensuring our children are successful and independent learners this academic year. We are promoting a ‘learning to learn’ culture across the school through a variety of curriculum activities including the implementation of our new PSHCE scheme – Jigsaw and the development of our Nurture provision with a particular focus on KS1 pupils.
  • Continue to raise standards in Writing–we will be providing children a variety of opportunities to support them in their journey to becoming independent writers including workshops, resources and staff training.
  • Continuing to raise standards in Reading–we strive to ensure children are confident and fluent readers as well as developing a love of reading. We hold a high emphasis on the importance of reading across the school from Foundation stage to Year 6 and are providing children with as many opportunities to read as possible as well as a variety of book genres including comics, information texts and poetry books.
  • Improving outcomes for our more able Pupil Premium pupils–we will be continuing to develop high aspirations in all children throughout the year through workshops, visits and challenge. We also utilise our intervention teachers to further challenge our AMA pupils in all areas.