Click here for our Pupil Premium Policy.

The pupil premium is additional funding for publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.  More information from the Department of Education.

At St James' we believe in creating opportunities for all our children to reach their full potential.  We want to remove the barriers to learning often experienced by children from disadvantaged backgrounds.  Deprivation of language, experience and support from home are barriers that many children in our school face. 

In recent years we have used our Pupil Premium allowance in a wide variety of different ways to:

• increase opportunities for children to work in small groups with adult support
• train staff to deliver the Maths Recovery intervention to targeted pupils
• equip teaching assistants and teachers with the skills to lead guided reasoning sessions in mathematics
• provide musical instrument tuition
• provide additional sporting activities
• provide opportunities for outdoor learning
• run after school clubs and enrichment activities 
• support the Hallé Shine Saturday project

At the end of each year, we evaluate the impact these strategies have had on our most vulnerable pupils.  This helps us to make decisions for the next year year and identify the different needs within each year group, in line with our Pupil Premium Policy.

Our Pupil Premium allocation is a very significant amount of money and forms a substantial part of the school's budget.  During the academic year, 2021-2022, the grant for our school is £108,945.  We have thought very carefully about how we can spend it to best meet the needs of our pupils.

This year we are using our Pupil Premium allocation to:  

• increase engagement with home (remote) learning by supporting families with the most appropriate means (e.g. e-devices, software and Wifi access)
• increase opportunities for children to work individually and/or in small groups with adult support - Higher Differentiated (HD) provision - to provide both academic and pastoral support
• employ staff to deliver one to one reading support to targeted pupils
• purchase online reading support for a wider group of pupils (Reading Plus)
• purchase support to raise attendance and punctuality of targeted pupils
• purchase additional educational psychology consultation and staff training  
• provide opportunities to apply key skills in cookery and outdoor learning 

Click here for our Pupil Premium Strategy Statement 2022-2023