view our pupil premium strategy here
We believe passionately that everybody is equal and that equal opportunities are part of our core values at Livingstone Academy. We will always strive to narrow any gaps, regardless of whether they are social, academic or cultural, to ensure every one of our students achieves their full potential every day. Our model of support for Pupil Premium students aims to address some of the challenges they may face and allow them to realise anything is possible in life. We help to remove the challenges our Pupil Premium students may face by:
- Improving self-efficacy and self-esteem of our disadvantaged students to ensure they are empowered to achieve anything in life and their true potential. Background does not determine outcome.
- Improving emotional, mental and social well-being to ensure we are breaking down barriers that can inhibit learning.
- Improving low aspirations to ensure our students are empowered to explore careers that will give them fulfilment and challenge in life.
- Improving inconsistent and erratic attendance patterns when they enter the Academy in Year 7.
- Narrow the gap in attainment and progress that typically exists on entry between our disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students.
- Improve their aspiration, knowledge, information and guidance for all disadvantaged students, in particular, those who are most able and disadvantaged.
- Regardless of starting points, ensure that all disadvantaged students make positive progress and attainment, whilst continuing to outperform national disadvantaged students in all comparisons.
- Ensure that students have stability, resources, routines and the basic needs to flourish at school.
- Providing the basic resources that may be taken for granted by other students to ensure they receive equality of opportunity to be successful at the Academy.
By promoting the above we will help ensure our disadvantaged students always outperform national Pupil Premium students. We will do this by:
- Improving students’ intrinsic motivation to succeed and change some negative educational experiences for some.
- Develop and increase cultural life experiences that help our students compete with those who have the same academic qualifications but who come from more affluent backgrounds and have experienced a wide range of cultural learning.
- Teach students to find solutions to problems rather than to give up when they come to a barrier. Developing the resilient learner, regardless of background and experience.
Evidence-Informed Practice
“Evidence-informed teachers and leaders combine findings from research with professional expertise to make decisions. Taking an evidence-informed approach to Pupil Premium spending can help schools to:
- Compare how similar challenges have been tackled in other schools.
- Understand the strength of evidence behind alternative approaches.
- Consider the likely cost-effectiveness of a range of approaches.”
– (The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium, 2019)
In planning our Pupil Premium strategy, the Academy has drawn both on academic research and on what we know from experience. Our spending plan has been informed by the findings of the Educational Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit, by what we know to have worked effectively in previous years, and by best practice from across the Harris Federation. In deciding which strategies to prioritise, we have considered:
- Likely impact on progress.
- Cost.
- Value-for money (i.e. cost-benefit analysis).
- Capacity to deliver in a sustained and effective manner.
The design of the Academy’s Pupil Premium strategy has also been influenced by the following points that are raised in The EEF Guide to the Pupil Premium 2019:
Quality teaching helps every child: Good teaching is the most important lever schools have to improve outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Using the Pupil Premium to improve teaching quality benefits all students and has a particularly positive effect on children eligible for the Pupil Premium. While the Pupil Premium is provided as a different grant from core funding, this financial split shouldn’t create an artificial separation from whole class teaching.
Implementation matters: The challenge of implementation means that less is more: selecting a small number of priorities and giving them the best chance of success is a safer bet than creating a long list of strategies that becomes hard to manage.
Support middle and high attainers too: The causes and consequences of disadvantage are varied: Pupil Premium students are not a homogeneous group. Students eligible for the Pupil Premium are more likely to be low-attaining than other children. However, tackling disadvantage is not only about supporting low attainers. For example, disadvantaged students who achieve highly in primary school are much less likely than their peers to receive top grades at GCSE.
Pupil Premium funding may benefit other groups of students: The Pupil Premium is designed to support schools to raise the attainment of disadvantaged children. However, many of the most effective ways to do this – including improving the quality of teaching – will also benefit other groups: that is fine. Likewise, some forms of targeted academic support or wider strategies will benefit other children, including children with Special Educational Needs and Children in Need.
Intervention isn’t everything: There is a strong evidence base showing the impact that high quality interventions can have on the outcomes of struggling students. However, while interventions may well be one part of an effective Pupil Premium strategy, they are likely to be most effective when deployed alongside efforts to improve teaching, and attend to wider barriers to learning, such as attendance and behaviour.
A tiered approach: A tiered approach to Pupil Premium spending can help schools balance approaches to improving teaching, targeted academic support and wider strategies.
Reporting
We will report regularly on:
- The progress made towards narrowing the gap, by year group, for socially disadvantaged students.
- An outline of the provision and an evaluation of the cost effectiveness, in terms of the progress made by the students receiving a particular provision, when compared to other forms of support.
The leaders of the Academy will ensure that there is an annual statement, published on the website, on how the Pupil Premium funding has been used to address the issue of ‘narrowing the gap’, for socially disadvantaged pupils. This task will be carried out within the requirements published by the Department for Education.
Measuring Impact
The Academy will measure the impact of the Pupil Premium spending by:
- Tracking the progress of Pupil Premium students in line with our assessment policy.
- Assessing the success of students at the end of each Key Stage relative to their target grades and against threshold measures.
- Measuring the trends of attendance and behaviour indicators such as rewards and sanctions of Pupil Premium students and comparing to other Academy students.
Service Pupil Premium
The amount of funding for children of service personnel is lower than the other categories at £310 per child. It is paid as an additional amount to the school in recognition that in some cases these children are more likely to have had to move between schools at different times (often more than once) due to family relocation and that there may be occasions where a parent might be stationed on service away from the family home, including overseas. The additional funding for the children of service personnel will be used in the same way as for children in receipt of free school meals or looked after and post adopted children and will depend on the individual circumstances and need. This might include support with learning resources, help with transport or the provision of a mentor. The school Pupil Premium coordinator will liaise with the student, their family and other Livingstone Academy staff to help determine the most appropriate avenues of support.