St Clare’s, a Catholic main faculty within the seaside city of Clacton on Sea, some of the disadvantaged areas of the UK. With many college students domestically primarily based they’ve a big proportion of pupils eligible for pupil premium. Headteacher Jamie Whiteside and pupil premium lead Hannah Smith inform us how they use pupil premium funding to enhance outcomes for all pupils at St Clare’s.
Our college ethos is to create fairness for all pupils no matter circumstance, and we use pupil premium funding to assist this purpose.
Diagnosing the wants of our pupil premium cohort
We take a granular method to figuring out deprived pupils’ obstacles early on of their faculty life. These obstacles vary from attendance to social and emotional or educational wants, and we attempt to establish and attempt to take away these obstacles to allow them to flourish.
That is achieved by way of a holistic method that features a rigorous cycle of planning, instructing and evaluation from an academic and social emotional perspective. We’ve got methods and processes in place to recognise pupils’ wants shortly and establish what steps are wanted to allow all pupils to totally entry the curriculum. This method informs our pupil premium technique planning.
Our method to supporting deprived pupils
As soon as pupils’ wants are recognized, kids and households have entry to numerous specialist employees who assist assist pupils relying on their particular person obstacles. Working with households is a necessary a part of the answer and contemplating how we finest talk and construct sturdy relationships with them has been an vital journey. The Training Endowment Basis’s (EEF) parental engagement analysis has helped information our method.
A part of our key ideas in no matter we do – together with our pupil premium technique – is to be constant within the method, monitor precisely and be reflective on the effectiveness. No matter the issue – we’ll discover a resolution.
We take an entire faculty method to studying from early years to yr six. All of the methods we use are evidence-informed and assist sustained development over time. They embody prioritising high-quality instructing by way of our artificial phonics scheme, the mastery maths method and Trauma Perceptive follow. Employees are educated completely, and methods are embedded to make sure that kids are given a constant, high quality supply by all. If, on reflection, initiatives usually are not effectively embedded or efficient, we’ll revisit them.
Senior leaders work collaboratively with the pupils, employees, mother and father/carers and governors to get correct suggestions on our method, and we welcome exterior suppliers or consultants into the varsity to assist assist new initiatives. When establishing our new nurture provision to assist pupils with social, emotional and psychological well being wants, we collaborated with native faculties, visited different settings for recommendation and requested an inclusion evaluate from the native authority.
Our outcomes and future plans
Our outcomes are persistently above common in comparison towards nationwide common expectations. Our phonics screening outcomes are persistently above the nationwide common and 68% of our deprived pupils met the anticipated normal in studying, writing and maths on the finish of Key Stage 2.
When surveyed, over 90% of households with kids at St Clare’s acknowledged that their kids preferred faculty, and that instructing was good. Our current Ofsted inspection acknowledged that the non-public improvement of our pupils was excellent.
Our nurture provision has enabled pupils with social, emotional and psychological well being must entry a bespoke curriculum. This has resulted within the kids reintegrating again into class, elevated well-being and accessing core studying.
The EEF analysis into arts participation is an space that we need to additional develop to enhance our artistic curriculum supply. We’re collaborating with different faculties to coach our employees to turn out to be “Cultural champions” who can assist and lead this initiative.
Everybody needs to be given the chance to succeed no matter their circumstances. Their circumstances could change over time, and so would possibly our method and methods, however our ideas will stay the identical: be constant, monitor precisely and be reflective.
An usually used phrase at St Clare’s is ‘discover a resolution, not an issue’.
Additional studying:
Pupil premium: overview – GOV.UK
Pupil premium: allocations and circumstances of grant 2024 to 2025 – GOV.UK
Utilizing Pupil Premium: Steering for Faculty Leaders
