Clarkson Infant and Nursery School

Pupil Premium

What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil Premium is additional funding we receive, to help us make a positive difference to the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils. All publicly-funded schools are entitled to Pupil Premium. It is calculated by the number of pupils we have who are, or were, eligible for free school meals in the last 6 years or who are identified as 'looked after' by a Local Authority (children in care or foster care).

You can check if you are eligible, in minutes, using this link: https://www.cambridgeshire.gov.uk/residents/children-and-families/schools-learning/help-with-school-learning-costs/pupil-premium

Why is Pupil Premium important?

At Clarkson Infant & Nursery School, we strive to overcome educational disadvantage by aiming high, while supporting and encouraging our families to do the same.

Nationally, there is a strong link between economic disadvantage and poor achievement in schools. Across the country, there is a significant gap between the progress made by pupils eligible for free school meals and those who are not eligible. There are many reasons why this gap exists and Pupil Premium is given to schools to help us try to close this gap. It is important, because it enables us to counteract the disadvantages that poverty imposes on children.

How is Pupil Premium used at Clarkson Infant School?

Overcoming disadvantage is at the heart of all we do.

Pupil Premium funding ensures we can put the support in place, to help every child in our school thrive, by:

creating a welcoming environment for children and their families
designing and delivering a broad, balanced, knowledge-based curriculum, formed on our children's needs
building positive, respectful relationships, built on understanding our pupils and their lives
providing crucial experiences, not only by enhancing our curriculum with education trips and visits to school, but also with real-life items
investing in our staff to provide high quality teaching, enabling a full range of teaching strategies and techniques, to ensure the achievement gap is diminished
prioritising books/stories within our curriculum and providing high quality books for children both in school and also, significantly, at home
weaving whole-school, long-term literacy strategies into our curriculum - eg 'Read, Write Inc', 'Word Aware', 'Communication InPrint' and oracy strategies
empowering parents/carers by informing and teaching them how to support learning at home
implementing a graduated response to behaviour and social, emotional and mental-health needs, to give all children a positive school experience

What are our main challenges?

Overcoming disadvantage is at the heart of all we do.

The key challenges and barriers to learning include:

the prime attainment areas of learning, including communication and language, are very low on entry to school
limited language and narrow real-life experiences hamper the children's ability to comprehend and reason, impacting their literacy and fluency of reading
poor mental health amongst our families and lack of employment impacts attendance and children's resiliance
lack of resources at home such as paper, pens and pencils

Pupil Premium expenditure

Schools are free to spend the Pupil Premium on the needs they identify for their school. We are required to publish how we intend to spend Pupil Premium and evaluate the previous year’s spending. There is no expectation that schools should spend the grant only on eligible pupils, or on a per eligible pupil basis. We use a 5-step system to plan, deliver, monitor and sustain an effective Pupil Premium strategy. Please see the links below for our provision and spending documents: