Pupil Premium & Free School Meals

What is Pupil Premium?

The Government provides funds to schools to help children from families with lower income, or in challenging situations. This funding is called Pupil Premium.

Pupil Premium is additional to main school funding; evidence suggests that this is the best way to address the current underlying inequalities between children by ensuring that funding to tackle disadvantaged pupils reaches the children who need it the most.

Schools decide how the Pupil Premium is spent, since they are best placed to assess what additional provision should be made for the individual pupils within their responsibility. Schools are held accountable for how they have used the additional funding to support children from disadvantaged families: read more on the Department for Education website.

Children entitled to Pupil Premium also receive a one-off 50% reduction on uniform costs as well as 50% off all after-school clubs and breakfast club.

Applying for Pupil Premium & Free School Meal

As we are based in London, all our pupils from Reception to Year 6 are provided with free school meals until the end of the academic year in 2028. Children will receive their free school meal under either 'universal free school meal' funding (Reception to Year 2), or the Mayor of London scheme (Year 3 to Year 6).

However, it is really important that families complete our school or Islington Council's registration form because a child may be eligible for extra funding.

Please do ask our office team, who will be able to advise and help you with the application process in confidence.

Eligibility for Pupil Premium & Free School Meal

If you receive any of the following benefits, your child may be eligible for Pupil Premium and free school meals:

Income support
Income-based Jobseeker’s Allowance
Income-related Employment and Support Allowance
Support under Part VI of the Immigration and Asylum Act 1999
The guaranteed element of Pension Credit
Child Tax Credit (provided you’re not also entitled to Working Tax Credit and have an annual gross income of no more than £16,190)
Working Tax Credit run-on - paid for 4 weeks after you stop qualifying for Working Tax Credit
Universal Credit - if you apply on or after 1 April 2018 your household income must be less than £7,400 a year (after tax and not including any benefits you get).

Check your eligibility if you believe that your child(ren) are eligible for Pupil Premium and free school meals.

How do we use it?

Our Pupil Premium grant is utilised in a range of ways that we believe has the greatest impact. The grant provides a range of additional support for our pupils, which will have a significant impact on children’s learning, progress, and attainment.

Whilst we believe that effectively differentiated Quality First Teaching is crucial and ensures success and progress, we also understand the importance of targeted, precision intervention. As such, we use a range of intervention strategies to provide children with the additional support and challenge that they need in order to accelerate progress and for some children to eliminate barriers to learning so they are equipped with the tools, skills and experience they need to reach age related expectations and as they move through the school.

Targeted support is being provided through one-to-one and small group tuition, these interventions support children in knowing where they are and what they need to do to improve their work.

WPS Pupil Premium Strategy 2024-25

How do we manage the decision process?

We have established clear lines of responsibility with a member of the senior leadership team and a local governor taking responsibility for Pupil Premium. Our strategy for effective use of Pupil Premium grant is driven by the school leadership team and is based upon careful discussions, observations, assessment and monitoring.

We have planned our spending carefully to ensure that it has been spent to maximum effect. This means making informed decisions about our spending such as:

Ensuring that spending is directly linked to closing gaps in attainment
Making use of our attainment and progress data to ensure interventions
Making sure that we focus on ensuring Quality First teaching is our priority and at the heart of all we do
Ensuring that we effectively evaluate the impact of challenge and support where necessary.

Additional funding is used to benefit all pupil premium children and supports higher as well as lower ability children by extending the provision on offer.

The majority of our pupil premium is spent on strategies to raise attainment and close any gaps. Strategies include:

Pupil welfare and wellbeing

Rewards for excellent attendance and punctuality
Extended places at Breakfast Club and after school clubs that are subsidised for those children in receipt of Pupil Premium
Supporting families with uniform and clothing requirements.

Raising Standards

Additional non-class based senior staff to enable the teaching of children in smaller class sizes and in small groups for aspects of core subjects
Additional purchases of Reading books and materials to support the teaching of phonics and reading
Professional development: releasing teachers to work with colleagues across the school and the wider Trust to raise standards and close the attainment gap
Additional support from the Early Years team at Islington Local authority to ensure best practice
Additional interventions to boost levels and provide small group catch up sessions, including 1:1 tuition for targeted children.

Enrichment

Allocated greater amount of money from budget for off-site activities and in-school enrichment opportunities
Homework and extended day clubs provided free of charge to targeted pupils
Subsidised musical instrument lessons.

Still confused?

Feel free to ask more details to our office team, who will be able to advise and help you with the application process. All discussions will be discreet and will be kept in confidence.