Pupil Premium

The Arnewood School is firmly committed to ensuring equality of education and providing equal access to opportunities for all students, irrespective of their socio-economic background. Our curriculum explicitly aims to teach our students to become scholarly, literate and numerate, reflective and resilient learners and tolerant, outward-looking and understanding of their place in the world.  Approximately a quarter of our students are from a disadvantaged background.  It is the objective of this strategy to ensure that each and every student has the opportunity to fulfil their potential and move into the next stage of their education with the skills, knowledge and qualifications they need.

We have a three-tier strategy to overcome the challenges faced by our disadvantaged students.  The most important part of this is our desire to improve teaching and learning. This is based on providing a consistent classroom experience based on the principles of The Arnewood Lesson in order to create a calm, purposeful environment for students to learn.  This is supported by the development of our literacy provision in order to help disadvantaged students close the literacy gap that many of them experience. The improvement of teacher feedback to explicitly inform students how to improve their work is also a top priority.  This strategy also has targeted support for specific groups of disadvantaged students in order to improve the attendance of some students, parental engagement as well as focusing on the recovery from the Covid pandemic. The final tier is aimed at providing disadvantaged students with the same opportunities as their non-disadvantaged peers in order to build the cultural capital that will allow them to be successful.

To view the Pupil Premium Strategy Statement in full click here to be redirected to item 11 on the list of statutory information.

Challenges

The key challenges to achievement that we have identified among our disadvantaged pupils.

  • The attendance of disadvantaged students is lower than that of non-disadvantaged students in all year groups.
  • The attainment and progress of disadvantaged students at the end of KS4 are lower than non-disadvantaged students.
  • Fewer parents of disadvantaged students engage with the school – e.g. the parents’ evening attendance of the parents of disadvantaged students is lower than the parents of non-disadvantaged.
  • Disadvantaged students have lower rates of literacy which provide a barrier to accessing the curriculum and to their progress.
  • Some disadvantaged students have low aspirations and do not participate in as wide a range of extracurricular opportunities as non-disadvantaged students.
  • Disadvantaged students are not always “exam ready” with appropriate resources and support for examined subjects at the time of their final exams
  • The impact of COVID school closures in 2020 and 2021 and individuals’ self-isolation has widened some gaps in disadvantaged students’ learning and increased students’ social and emotional concerns.

 

Intended Outcomes

To achieve the overall aim, we plan to use the Pupil Premium funding to:

  • Improved attendance of disadvantaged students.
  • Improved attainment and progress of disadvantaged students in the GCSE examinations.
  • Improved literacy of disadvantaged students.
  • Improved parental engagement
  • The impact of COVID on disadvantaged students’ learning and attendance will be minimised.
  • Disadvantaged students will have high aspirations and will experience a wide range of extra-curricular opportunities.

What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil premium is funding to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England. Evidence shows that disadvantaged children generally face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils.

Each year government decide how much funding is allocated to each school based on the number of Pupil Premium students. Based on the number of students that qualify each school is allocated funding to support these students. For an overview of Pupil Premium click here.