Menu

Pupil Premium

Pupil premium strategy statement 

This statement details our school’s use of pupil premium (and recovery premium for the 2023 to 2024 academic year) funding to help improve the attainment of our disadvantaged pupils.  

It outlines our pupil premium strategy, how we intend to spend the funding in this academic year and the effect that last year’s spending of pupil premium had within our school.  

School overview 

Detail 

Data 

School name 

Castle Primary School 

Number of pupils in school  

116 (excl Nursery) 

Proportion (%) of pupil premium eligible pupils 

31% 

Academic year/years that our current pupil premium strategy plan covers (3-year plans are recommended) 

 2023/2024 

2024/2025 

2025/2026 

Date this statement was published (update) 

12/11/2024 

Date on which it will be reviewed 

July 2025 

Statement authorised by 

S Morton 

Pupil premium lead 

Laura Liddell 

Governor / Trustee lead 

 

Funding overview 

Detail 

Amount 

Pupil premium funding allocation this academic year 

£58,060 

Recovery premium funding allocation this academic year 

£0 

Pupil premium funding carried forward from previous years (enter £0 if not applicable) 

£0 

Total budget for this academic year 

If your school is an academy in a trust that pools this funding, state the amount available to your school this academic year 

£58,060 

Part A: Pupil premium strategy plan 

Statement of intent 

Our aim at Castle Primary School is to ensure all pupil have the same opportunities to succeed and reach their potential. We employ a range of strategies and interventions to remove barriers to learning caused by personal circumstances or gaps in key learning, enabling all pupils to access all aspects of the curriculum on offer and experience wider school life to its full. This ensures we develop emotionally resilient and confident individuals ready to achieve their ambitions and continue their journey of learning.  

Key interventions and approaches on a whole school level are not restricted to pupils eligible for Pupil Premium. However, some specific interventions and school initiatives are made possible by Pupil Premium and additional funding streams. Our strategies target the individualised needs of our children in receipt of Pupil Premium. The challenges are varied and there is no ‘one size fits all’ approach to the support offered. 

Our ultimate objectives are:  

  • To eliminate the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils at Castle Primary School 

  • For all disadvantaged pupils to meet or exceed nationally expected progress rates  

  • For all disadvantaged pupils to access all aspects of the curriculum including trips and extra-curricular provision  

  • For all disadvantaged pupils to be confident and emotionally resilient individuals ready for the next phase of life 

  • For all our disadvantaged pupils to be articulate learners who are empowered to speak with confidence, drawing on high quality vocabulary and sentence stems taught across the whole curriculum. 

  • For all our disadvantaged pupils to attend school every day, on time, and ready to learn. 

We aim to do this through:  

  • Building relationships with key families to ensure they seek early support by engaging in open dialogue and helping them to access necessary support swiftly 

  • Frequent monitoring of qualitative and quantitative data to ensure accurate and timely identification of pupils in need of support  

  • Ensuring that teaching and learning opportunities meet the needs of all the pupils and that where pupils have specific needs that these are addressed through high quality, evidence-based interventions  

  • Ensuring all vulnerable learners are ready to learn through access to a breakfast club and uniform provision as necessary 

  • Ensuring that vulnerable learners have access to high quality SEMH support both in the wider school environment and with individual/small group ELSA provision as needed. 

  • Ensuring all high quality first teaching/ planning/ learning environments and support staff promote/ reference / scaffold the use of tier 2 and 3 vocabulary in core and wider curriculum lessons. 

  • Ensure that sentence stems and the SHAPE/SHREC processes are embedded and modelled by all children and staff when speaking in all areas of the school day. 

When making provision for socially disadvantaged pupils, we recognise that not all pupils who receive free school meals will be socially disadvantaged and that not all pupils who are socially disadvantaged are registered or qualify for free school meals. We reserve the right to allocate Pupil Premium funding to support any pupil or groups of pupils the school has legitimately identified as being socially disadvantaged.  

Achieving these objectives:  

The range of provisions available at Castle Primary School focus on academic support, engagement and wellbeing. They include but are not limited to:  

Academic support 

  • Frequent assessment and progress monitoring from Head and Assistant Head of School  

  • Intervention and precision teaching for English and Maths 

  • Additional Teaching Assistant support to assist small group teaching and focus on identified Pupil Premium Pupils 

  • Additional opportunities for 1:1 reading with an adult 

  • Staff CPD to ensure high quality teaching and learning  

  • Planning considers appropriate scaffolding, vocabulary and sentence stems to allow for all children to access age-appropriate curriculum content 

Engagement 

  • Attendance monitoring- Trust Attendance Lead and HoS monitor attendance and support families to improve attendance and punctuality.   

  • Morning Check-ins- An opportunity for vulnerable children to meet a key adult at the start of the school day to ensure they are ready for the day 

  • Music Tuition-Opportunities to access free music lessons within school. 

  • Parental Support-Hosting parent support coffee mornings to engage PP families and improve communication.  

  • ELSA parental drop-in sessions to support PP families as needed 

  • School activity subsidy- school trips and activities are subsidised for Pupil Premium families to ensure access for all 

Wellbeing 

  • Dedicated ELSA (Emotional Literacy Support Assistant) to support the SEMH needs of our PP children by working with children 1:1 and in small groups.  

  • Lunch Club- An alternative lunchtime provision to support children who find the dinner hall and/ or playground challenging. Lunch club focuses on developing social skills and interaction in a more intimate environment.  

  • Subsidised afterschool and breakfast provision. Opportunities to access free wrap around care for PP families struggling with childcare. 

Challenges 

This details the key challenges to achievement that we have identified among our disadvantaged pupils. 

Challenge number 

Detail of challenge  

1 

Accelerated progress of Pupil Premium children is lower than Non-Pupil Premium 

2 

Attendance of Pupil Premium is below that of non-Pupil Premium, particularly persistent absence 

3 

Maths attainment of PP is low  

4 

High level of SEMH need and/ or those who have experienced Trauma within PP families (50%) 

Intended outcomes  

This explains the outcomes we are aiming for by the end of our current strategy plan, and how we will measure whether they have been achieved. 

Intended outcome 

Success criteria 

  • Disadvantaged pupils make at least expected progress from their individual starting points in all areas of the curriculum and especially in Reading, Writing and Maths. 

  • The gap is narrowed in the progress and attainment of PP and non-PP children. 

  • Those pupils who have ‘fallen behind’ are supported and tracked closely in fortnightly Core group meetings and PPMS to ensure 

they make accelerated progress and ‘catchup’ or exceed prior attainment standards. 

  • Children who need to make accelerated progress, receive targeted high-quality intervention which is monitored by school 

leaders. 

  • Pupils have regular/weekly opportunities 

to rehearse, practice and consolidate key skills in reading, spelling and mental arithmetic. 

  • Support staff and class teachers support learning effectively using COEL strategies to identify and address learning gaps and misconceptions. 

  • Additional intervention sessions take place based on gaps in learning and with reference to previous data and learning. 

  • All disadvantaged pupils will meet national expectations for attendance and persistent absence. 

  • Disadvantaged pupils will match or exceed national averages for non-disadvantaged pupils (96+%) 

  • Monitoring of attendance by Head of School and rigorous application of Attendance policy brings about and increase in PP pupils’ attendance and a decrease in persistent absence. 

  • Staff are aware of difficulties that may impact PP learners and have plans in place to support these. 

  • Increased parental engagement, particularly in reading  

  • Increased number of PP families attending parenting evenings and engaging in home reading. 

  • As a result, Increased % of PP pupils are working at ARE or above across the school in phonics and reading. 

  • SEMH provision supports PP families 

  • PP families and pupils feel supported and actively seek the support of the school to support them in times of need 

  • PP pupils feel safe and secure at school, have strategies to support their SEMH and can share how they are supported in school. 

  • As a result, PP children are actively engaged in learning which is reflected in pupil voice, learning walks, book looks, attendance and progress measures. 

Activity in this academic year 

This details how we intend to spend our pupil premium (and recovery premium funding) this academic year to address the challenges listed above. 

Teaching (for example, CPD, recruitment and retention) 

Budgeted cost: £16,913 

Activity 

Evidence that supports this approach 

(Evidence from Education Endowment Foundation – Teaching and Learning Toolkit) 

Challenge number(s) addressed 

Engagement in CPD including the Maths and English (cost of cover and resources) 

Teaching Mastery = + 5 Months 

1-2 

 

Role of Pupil Premium lead 

Evidence from Education Endowment Foundation - The Guide to Pupil Premium: A tiered approach To Spending 

1-4 

Subject Leadership Time (cost of cover) 

1 

 

Targeted academic support (for example, tutoring, one-to-one support structured interventions)  

Budgeted cost: £24,648 

Activity 

Evidence that supports this approach  

(Evidence from Education Endowment Foundation – Teaching and Learning Toolkit) 

Challenge number(s) addressed 

Additional support for 

children requiring 

intervention (1:1 and 

small group support) 

Individualised instruction = +4  

One-to-one tuition = +5  

Small group tuition = +4  

 

1, 2 

Catch-Up Tutor (1:1 and small group support) 

ELSA time (1:1 and small group) 

Metacognition & self-regulation = +7 

Social and Emotional Learning = + 4 

1,2,4 

Additional in- class TA support  

Teaching assistant supervision = +4 Months 

1,2 

Talking Partners/ ELS Intervention 

Oral Language Interventions = +6 

1, 2, 4 

Peer Reading 1:1 

Peer Tutoring +5 

1,2 

Language development opportunities 

Early language programme for all EYFS children  

NELI programme for identified children  

Use of SHAPE/SHREC planned into wider curriculum areas. 

Opportunities to speak publicly in class/ wider school 

Trust wide public speaking events 

1, 2, 4 

 

Wider strategies (for example, related to attendance, behaviour, wellbeing) 

Budgeted cost: £16,499 

Activity 

Evidence that supports this approach 

(Evidence from Education Endowment Foundation – Teaching and Learning Toolkit) 

Challenge number(s) addressed 

ELSA drop in sessions, coffee mornings and support workshops. 

Parental Engagement +4 

2,3 

‘Zones of Regulation’ school-wide approach to Self-Regulation 

Metacognition & self-regulation = +7 

Social and Emotional Learning = +4 

 

2,4 

Metacognition CPD 

Morning club check-in with key adult 

Metacognition & self-regulation = +7 

Social and Emotional Learning = +4 

2,4 

Lunch club 

 

 

 

Total budgeted cost: £58,060 

Part B: Review of outcomes in the previous academic year 

Pupil premium strategy outcomes 

This details the impact that our pupil premium activity had on pupils in the 2023 to 2024 academic year.  

Aim 

Outcome 

  • Disadvantaged pupils make at least expected progress from their individual starting points in all areas of the curriculum and especially in Reading, Writing and Maths. 

  • The gap is narrowed in the progress and attainment of PP and non-PP children. 

 

 

  • 100% of disadvantaged pupils in  

Years 1-5 made at least expected progress from their starting points in Reading, Writing and Maths.  

  • In Year 2 PP attainment increased by 20% in Reading, Writing and Maths. PP and non-PP children performed equally in writing, narrowing the gap with Non–PP peers in reading and increasing the gap marginally with a 3% gap increase in Maths. 

• All disadvantaged pupils will meet national expectations for attendance and persistent absence. 

 

 

  • Increased parental engagement, particularly in reading 

 

 

  • Reading is still in need of further improvements.  25% of PP pupils passed the phonics screener but and 100% passed Year 2 retakes.   

  • From 50% - 80% of PP children are working at ARE or above in reading.  

  • Parental participation in school events was high, will only a few families per class not attending key celebrations and booking parents eve appointments. Non-attendance at parent eve was followed up with phone call updates from class teachers. 

  • Reading engagement for some key families remains an issue. 

  • SEMH provision supports PP families 

ELSA support for key children supported attendance for families. ‘Soft data’ such as social interactions at playtimes and positive communication with parents show key children improving in key areas. Key families are seeking support from school in the early stages of any issues or concerns as opposed to school needing to make contact when issues/ concerns impact school. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Pupil Premium Date  
Castle Pupil premium statement 2023 24.docx 10th Nov 2023 Download
Back to Top