Pupil Premium

Here at Carfield Primary School, our aim is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make good progress and achieve good levels of attainment across all subject areas – in line with their potential. Pupil premium pupils deserve to have access that enables them to socially and culturally develop, which is not hampered by their socio-economic background.  The focus of our pupil premium strategy is to support disadvantaged pupils to achieve this goal, including progress for those who are already achieving results at age related expectations or higher.  

Common barriers to learning for disadvantaged students at Carfield Primary school can include weak language and communication skills due to an increasing number of pupils with English as an additional language (12.39%); attendance and punctuality issues with negative views of school due to lasting anxiety from Covid (cited by PP parents) and more frequent behaviour issues.  

We recognise that the challenges are varied and there is no ‘one size fits all’. Using the Education Endowment Foundation guidance on Pupil Premium, the school acknowledges that ‘good teaching is the most important lever schools have to improve outcomes for disadvantaged students’ and as such we intend to focus heavily on developing the quality of teaching through focused CPD of teachers and teaching assistants linked to the school improvement plan.  

 The key principles of our strategy:   

• Promote an ethos of attainment for all at Carfield Primary School, specific to individual potential 
• Individualised approach to address barriers through strategic planning 
• High quality teaching through research backed approaches 
• Appropriate staff members working with disadvantaged students developing positive relationships
• Decisions based on data (formative and summative), pupils needs, parent conversation and professional judgement (internal and external) and response to the evidence and research  
• Clear, proactive leadership – Ensuring all PP pupils have fair access to all areas of the curriculum 

Whilst our strategy adopts the recommended EEF tiered approach, we recognise that many elements of the strategy will overlap categories and that the balance of the approach will vary from year to year as the schools’ and students’ priorities change always ensuring the optimal approach for all of our pupils.