Pupil Premium at Shire Oak
At Shire Oak, we want the very best education for all our pupils. Our focus is on the progress that pupils make, and this is monitored closely throughout the year. We have termly parents' evenings to ensure that parents and carers are fully involved in helping their children to make the most progress that they can. We also track different groups of pupils separately (such as boys, girls, children on the Special Educational Needs register and children with English as an Additional Language), including pupils who are entitled to Pupil Premium.
The Pupil Premium is allocated to children who are, or have previously been, in receipt of free school meals, have parents in the armed forces, or children who are looked after (i.e in care). It is intended to help schools to remove barriers to learning which certain circumstances may create for children and their families.
How is Pupil Premium funding used?
For a detailed breakdown of how Pupil Premium funding was allocated in Shire Oak, please see our:
The information below gives a brief outline of some of the ways we use our Pupil Premium funding:
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A specialist English and maths teacher who works with children from Year 2 upwards to ensure that children get extra help if they are not making good progress. She also works with children who are capable of the highest levels of attainment with a little extra support and confidence.
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Other targeted interventions for maths and English, such as Alpha to Omega, Nessy (dyslexia programmes), and the Catch Up Reading programme and school designed programmes (including sessions based on the Numbers Count programme.) This is done partly by increasing the number of Learning Support Assistants that work in school so that each class has at least one assistant that the teacher can direct to work with children at any level.
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Revision club for Year 6.
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Philosophy Exchange Leeds. We work with a community philosopher and post and undergraduates from the University to work on developing children’s philosophical enquiry skills. This helps all children to develop their academic and cognitive language, their reasoning skills, academic resilience and the ability to argue in a positive way. For more on this, please visit our Projects page.
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Subsidising educational visits, residential visits, music lessons, etc.
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We have an Opportunities Fund at school to remove barriers to learning and progress, and this includes provision for children to pursue their talents and interests in extra-curricular activities .
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Coordinating the work of volunteers. Our volunteers make a strong contribution to children’s reading and other skills. In order to make sure they are effectively directed and properly inducted we invest in this work.
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Nurture work, including the therapeutic intervention Drawing and Talking as well as Lego Therapy and 1:1 Learning Mentor time.
What impact has Pupil Premium funding had?
Naturally it can be very difficult to identify exactly which factors have made the biggest difference to a child who is benefitting from our broad and balanced curriculum, good pastoral support and any specific interventions put in place for them. However, we do know that our targeted work is making a difference: Our KS2 average progress scores in reading, writing and maths for children eligible for Free School Meals/Pupil Premium in 2022 was above that of all children nationally. Children taking part in interventions with Mrs Hill typically make several months progress in the time that they are working with her. We have data about the individual children and the progress they have made on these different interventions but sharing this on our website may allow individual children to be identified.
