Pupil Premium

Our Vision and Strategy

Since 2012 , there has been a requirement for schools to report on their use of the Pupil Premium and outline their strategy for improving outcomes for disadvantaged children.. This is a sum of money allocated per pupil who: is Looked After (foster care), has been previously adopted from care, is in a forces family or has been eligible for Free School Meals within the last 6 years (‘Ever 6’).

If you think your family may be entitled to Pupil Premium, please download the form   here    and return this to the main office. 

Our Vision

Achievement for ALL children:

• We have high expectations for all pupils
• We ensure that teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all pupils.
• We ensure that appropriate provision is made for pupils who belong to vulnerable groups, this includes ensuring that the needs of disadvantaged pupils are adequately assessed and addressed.

We aim high, we find out what can every child achieve and how we can enable that. 

Our 3 Year Strategy 

• We make sure our provision is right for all pupils. We track this carefully.
• We make sure that we identify any children that are underperforming quickly and that we know how to address this.
• We have 2 DIsadvantaged Children Champions- our Head of School and a Governor in our school.
• We make sure that any interventions we run are found to be successful through research based evidence.
• We track the progress and attainment for all our pupils carefully through data , progress meetings, talking to staff, children and parents.
• We make sure all our partners understand our strategy-we talk to our Governors, staff, children and parents and check we are understanding all children’s needs in a variety of ways.
• We share our information with all stake holders.
• We make sure our spending is tracked and that our actions provide value for money.
• We make sure all staff know how to track and use information about their children to support their planning and provide the best learning opportunities for all.
• We make sure our curriculum is creative and flexible and children have some ownership of their learning.
• We work with other schools and county wide projects to make sure we know about best practice and the most effective strategies.
• We review our practice and adapt and refine our strategy to constantly strive for achievement for all children.
• We keep up to date by attending network meetings and reading research.
• We value all staff and their roles at our school and we provide training for interventions and focus support for all.

This academic year, (2019-2020) our disadvantaged children represented 2% of our school population. We asked the staff, children and parents about our children and what would make the difference to their learning, as well as using our assessments and data analysis to ensure we have the right provision for maximising progress for all children. We know that the main barriers to learning for our current Pupil Premium children include communication and interaction needs, personal , social and emotional aspects as well as individual areas of need that are addressed through bespoke planning and provision.We research the most successful strategies to enable our children to narrow their gaps (using the EEF toolkit amongst others) and we make provision for accelerating progress.

Our Key Strategy aims for our disadvantaged pupil. 

Teaching priorities for current academic year

Amount received: Financial year 2019/2020: £38621

Specific targeted support for this academic year

Wider strategies for current academic year

Monitoring and Implementation

Strategy reviewed Oct 2020 - next review OCt 2021

Previous Years

Academic year 2018/2019

Amount received: Financial year 2018/2019: £25080

Our Disadvantaged group that were funded in this academic year represented 4.8% of our school population and 2 of the group were on our SEND register. 28 children were eligible for Pupil Premium in total across the academic year.

These small numbers of Disadvantaged children vary year on year so are therefore tracked on a highly individual basis throughout the school and their curriculum and provision is tailored to meet needs according to their barriers to learning.

Our strategies and vision embrace “Achievement for ALL children" at Riverside and encompasses Quality First teaching and the highest expectations for all our pupils.

• We ran highly focus daily/weekly small groups for reading, writing and maths as well as extra phonics for those who need this. We used pre-teaching for some aspects of the curriculum as well as sending home support ideas.
• We offered lots of wider curriculum opportunities such as residential visits, school educational visits and out of school clubs. These motivated the children, built friendships and followed the children’s interests.
• We deployed additional staffing into Years 1,2, and 4 to support all children’s progress and attainment and to give opportunities for highly focussed groups to be effective in phonics and maths.
• We continued to develop our teaching and learning teams through CPD opportunities including Compass Buzz Mental Health training, metacognition and use of assessment in reading.

What was the impact of our strategy?

Whole group:

Attainment:

Reading: 50% attained age related expectations with 14% achieving the higher standard

Writing: 46% attained age related expectations with 11% achieving the higher standard

Maths:   61% attained age related expectations with 11% achieving the higher standard

In year progress:

Reading: 86% made expected or better progress with 25% making accelerated progress

Writing: 64% made expected or better progress with 25% making accelerated progress

Maths:   83% made expected or better progress with 25% making accelerated progress

Reportable groups at end of Phase (EYFS/END KEY STAGE 1/End key stage 2)

• EYFS- SEND pupil made accelerated progress towards ARE in all areas of learning .
• Y1/2 Phonics: -all disadvantaged achieved the required standard for the phonics screening
• Y2- 3 children- 1 child attained EXS in R/W and 2 children attained EXS in maths.
• Year 6-7 PP children including 1 SEND child. 1 SEND PP attained the expected standard in reading and 3 children attained the expected standard in R/W/M, with 1 pupil achieving the higher standard in each of R/W/M.

Several children joined us during the year and these presented with a range of social and emotional needs. These children were effectively supported by staff who had all received mental health training as well as key areas of focus for support.e.g. attachment and anxiety.

Riverside School makes use of the sum of money through Pupil Premium in other ways too, just a few of these are:

• • Maintaining a large team of Teaching Assistants and developing their skills and expertise through routes to further qualifications
  • Ensuring all staff are effectively trained and know how to deliver appropriate interventions to help pupils
  • Provision of a wide range of extra-curricular activities
  • Designing the curriculum to prepare our children for their needs for next stages of their lives, including transitions between classes/key stages and settings.
• Supporting our learning mentor posts – we have two full-time learning mentors who, amongst other things:
  • Challenge absence/lateness
  • Work with pastoral and behaviour issues
  • Support pupils on the dyslexia spectrum
  • Run specialist interventions to support Social and emotional barriers to learning such as emotional literacy, narrative therapy, anger management, nurture groups
  • Link home and school learning through effective communication.