Premiums and Grants
Pupil Premium
What is Pupil Premium?
Pupil Premium is additional funding given by the government to schools in England to raise the attainment of specific groups of children that fall into the following categories:
- Pupils who have been entitled to Free School Meals at any point over the last 6 years, due to qualifying for certain benefits
- Pupils who have had a parent in the armed services at any point over the last 6 years
- Pupils that are, or have been, looked after by the local authority or are adopted
Schools are free to spend the pupil premium grant as they see fit. However, they will be held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support low-income families.
By registering for free school meals parents can make sure their child’s school receives an annual grant of £1,345 per child. This can be used to fund many benefits such as school trips, uniforms and PE kit, music lessons, additional support to boost their child’s learning and much more.
Am I entitled to make a claim for my child?
It is important that parents claim, otherwise their children will miss out on this funding. Some parents of under-7s mistakenly think that they don’t need to register as they automatically get a free school meal. Others, although entitled to the funding, don’t register because their children are taking a packed lunch. These children are then missing out on available funding: £1,345 per year.
All children who currently qualify for free school meals based on their family circumstances are entitled to pupil premium. This applies if you receive any of the following benefits:
- Universal credit (provided you have a net income of £7,400 or less)
- Income support
- Income-based jobseekers’ allowance
- Working Tax Credit run-on, paid for four weeks after you stop receiving WTC
- Support under Part IV of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
- The guaranteed element of state pension credit
- Child tax credit, provided that you are not also entitled to working tax credit and have an annual gross income of £16,190 or less
Children who are or have been in care, and children who have a parent who is or was in the armed forces, are also entitled to pupil premium.
In addition, pupils who have qualified for free school meals on the above grounds in the past, but are no longer eligible, continue to receive pupil premium for six years.
How do I make a claim?
You can apply through Wiltshire County Council. HERE is the link.
How many pupils at Easton Royal Academy are eligible for Pupil Premium?
6% of pupils at ERA are in receipt of pupil premium.
What is the Pupil Premium allocation for 2024-25?
The pupil premium allocation for the current academic year is: £4365
How will the impact of the spending of Pupil Premium be measured?
To monitor progress on attainment, measures are included in national performance tables that capture the achievement of students covered by the Pupil Premium. At Easton Royal Academy, the cycle of data collection and the monitoring and tracking of the cohort’s attainment, is be used to inform pupil progress and enable the early identification of need, support and appropriate intervention.
How is the school accountable for how it spends Pupil Premium money?
The Principal and trustees of Excalibur Academies Trust are accountable for the impact of pupil premium funding in the following ways:
- performance tables, which show the performance of disadvantaged pupils compared with their peers
- published details online each year of how they are using the pupil premium and the impact it is having on pupil achievement
- the Ofsted inspection framework, where inspectors focus on the attainment of pupil groups, and in particular those who attract the pupil premium.
Documents and Statements
You can read about our pupil premium plans and spending in the document at the bottom of this page.
You can read the Excalbur Academies Trust pupil premium statement HERE.
Service Pupil Premium
What is Service Pupil Premium?
The Department for Education (DfE) introduced SPP in April 2011 in recognition of the specific challenges children from service families face, and as part of the commitment to delivering the Armed Forces Covenant.
State schools, academies and free schools in England with children of service families (reception-age to Year 11) are eligible for SPP funding. SPP helps the school give additional support that the service child may need. It is currently worth £340 per service child.
Is my child eligible?
Pupils are eligible for SPP if they meet one of the following criteria:
- one of their parents is serving in the regular armed forces (including pupils with a parent who is on full commitment as part of the full-time reserve service)
- they have been registered as a ‘service child’ on a school census in the past 6 years (see below the ‘DfE’s ever 6 service child measure’)
- one of their parents died while serving in the armed forces and the pupil receives a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the War Pensions Scheme
- one of their parents is in the armed forces of another nation and is stationed in England
DFE 'Ever 6' service child measure
The premium was extended so that any pupil in reception to Year 11 who has been flagged as a service child in the last 6 years will continue to receive the premium.
Ex-service personnel should tell the school if they left the armed forces within the last 6 years. Under the DfE’s ‘ever’ measure, schools will continue to receive SPP for up to 6 years for children whose parent(s) left the armed forces, provided the children were recorded as service children in a school census prior to their parent(s) leaving the forces. The ever measure also applies when service parents divorce or separate or when a service parent dies in service.
What is the purpose of the service pupil premium?
Eligible schools receive SPP mainly so that they can offer pastoral support during challenging times, and to help mitigate the negative impact of family mobility, separation or parental deployment on service children.
- Family mobility: when a service person is posted from one location to another, including overseas and within the UK, resulting in separation from their family or moving of the family home.
- Separation: occurs when a service person is assigned to an unaccompanied location, or the family choose to remain at home when the service person is deployed, resulting in their weekly/monthly commutes home and/or extended periods away.
- Parental deployment: when a service person is serving away from home for a period of time - this could be a 6 to 9-month tour of duty, a training course or an exercise which could last for a few weeks.
How does service pupil premium differ from pupil premium?
SPP helps schools provide mainly pastoral support for service children. The Pupil Premium (PP) was introduced to raise attainment and accelerate progress within disadvantaged groups.
What is SPP used for?
Schools have flexibility over how they use the SPP, as they are best placed to understand and respond to the specific needs of their pupil the funding has been allocated to.
The funding could be spent on:
- support, including counselling
- clubs, e.g. ‘skype time,’ to help to improve means of communication between the child and their deployed parent(s)
- helping children to develop scrapbooks and diaries, highlighting their achievements and daily school life
- nurture groups
- after-school activities that support the specific needs of armed forces children, e.g. resilience-building out-of-hours childcare for service children which is supported by the Wraparound Childcare Scheme
SPP should not be used to subsidise routine school activity, e.g. trips and music lessons. However schools may choose to fund school trips just for service children to help them build a sense of wider community, understand the role their service parent plays (e.g. with military-specific trips) and help them cope with the potential strains of armed forces family life.
Schools are held to account for the spending of this funding through Ofsted inspections, which focus on the progress and attainment of their wider PP-eligible pupil cohort.
Additional roles may be required to support the needs of service children when they join a new school, including:
- mobility coordinators - for schools with high levels of service pupil mobility
- forces liaison officers
- parent support advisers
Numbers
In this academic year at Easton Royal Academy, 9% of children are in receipt of SPP. We will receive £1700.
PE and Sport Premium
The PE and Sport Premium is designed to help children get an active start in life, supporting primary schools to improve the quality of their PE and sport provision so that pupils experience the benefits of regular exercise – from becoming healthier both mentally and physically to improved behaviour and better academic outcomes.
Our Plans, spending and outcomes for the year 2023 - 2024 can be found below. Our document for 2024 - 2025 will be released, as per DFE guidance, in July 2025.
