Warden Hill Primary School Cheltenham

Pupil Premium

The Government makes funds available to all schools to target children whose circumstances make them vulnerable to under-achievement. This is called the Pupil Premium. The aim of this money is to improve the attainment of eligible students. At Warden Hill Primary school we track all children’s progress closely and ensure that they are reaching their full potential whatever their circumstances.

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 the individual pupils within their responsibility. However, schools are to be held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support pupils from low-income families.

Pupil Premium funding is additional funding allocated to all schools to support disadvantaged pupils.

Warden Hill Primary School receives pupil premium for children who:

  • are currently claiming Free School Meals (FSM)
  • are ‘In Service’ by having parents who have served in the armed forces within the last 4 years
  • are Looked After Children (LAC)
  • every pupil who has received free school meals over the past 6 years.

We will tell you if your child is eligible for the funding or you can check online using a ‘Free School Meals / Pupil Premium Service’ at www.fsm.lgfl.net
Children in Reception and KS1 are automatically entitled to a free school lunch; however, registering your child for free meals will entitle them to additional support.

At Warden Hill, we aim to improve the academic outcomes of disadvantaged children of all abilities as well as ensuring that their attainment is in-line with that of their peers.

We invest the majority of our allocated Pupil Premium allowance on the quality of teaching – we believe as a school, that this matters most. The quality of education that we provide our children, is the biggest driver when we consider the impact of pupil attainment. While we firmly believe that targeted support undoubtedly has its place, we uphold a tiered approach to our spending, focusing first on high-quality teaching, followed by targeted support before moving to whole-school strategies. Using a tiered approach, according to the Education Endowment Foundation, this has shown the greatest amount of impact on children, and at Warden Hill we adopt this approach to our forward planning of our Pupil Premium spend, which has the potential to impact positively on all pupils.
All members of our school are committed to providing the very best education possible for our children. We work very closely with all of our stakeholders to ensure the children can be the best that they can be by setting high expectations and continually ensuring that children remain safe, secure and are happy. At Warden Hill Primary School, we support all our pupils. We do this by providing high quality teaching, supplemented by interventions for all children including specific targeted interventions for Pupil Premium, as well as targeting the more-abled disadvantaged children.

Warden Hill Primary School seeks to ensure the effectiveness of its use of the Pupil Premium. We understand and recognise that barriers to achievement take a variety of forms and we 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.
The School Leadership Team and the Governing Body, along with our Governor who is directly linked to Pupil Premium, gives pupil premium a high profile in our school. We work together to challenge and to champion their learning. We monitor the impact of all spending and interventions. We will ensure that all staff are accountable for the attainment and progress children in receipt of the pupil premium grant.

To guide us on how best to use the school’s resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils for this current year, we have considered evidence on what will have the most impact for our children at Warden Hill using educational research such as The Sutton Trust-EEF Teaching and Learning Toolkit.

As a school, we are always striving to identify ways to spend our allocation more effectively, by being forward-thinking and keeping up to date with current research and to use this evidence-based approach to inform us.