Pupil Premium is additional funding from the central government to support students who are considered disadvantaged.

This additional funding is allocated to schools to work with students :

• who have been registered as being entitled to free school meals at any point during the previous 6 years.
• the children of service personnel
• students who have been looked after for a continuous period of more than 6 months.

These groups of students attract different rates of funding. The different funding rates can be found on the Department For Education website: Pupil premium: overview - GOV.UK 

Evidence suggests that students from these backgrounds are more likely to underachieve than other students, and as a result, the Government allocates funding so that schools can target this underachievement and put personalised strategies in place to raise attainment and enable these students to achieve at least the same level as students, not from a disadvantaged background.

Wider aims of the Pupil Premium funding include:

• To increase social mobility
• To enable students from disadvantaged backgrounds to better access further education
• To reduce the attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving students, both locally and nationally

It is up to the individual school to decide how pupil premium should be best spent. The money is not directly spent on the individual student, but forms part of the whole school budget. At Wadham, we have used the funding to support a wide range of strategies to support pupil premium students. These strategies include staffing, additional Social and Emotional Support, Core subject extra lessons, phonics lessons, literacy and reading interventions. More detailed information on how we use the pupil premium funding can be found in Wadham Schools pupil premium statement Pupil premium strategy statement (wadhamschool.co.uk)

The progress of pupil premium students and the interventions are routinely monitored to ensure that strategies are effective and of a good quality. The Teaching and Learning lead, SENDCo, Deputy Heads and Middle leaders regularly quality assure  pupil premium progress through intervention tracking, work scrutinies and lesson observations. The School is held to account through the DFE performance tables as well as the Governing Body and must ensure that we are making a difference to the progress of pupil premium students.