Pupil Premium and Recovery Premium

What is the Pupil Premium?

Pupil premium is funding to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England. Evidence shows that disadvantaged children generally face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils.

Is your child eligible for Pupil Premium funding?

There are currently four types of Pupil Premium allocation:

Pupil Premium (Ever6);
Pupil Premium CfC
Pupil Premium Previously CfC
Service Child Premium (Ever6 Service Children).

In order to receive this additional funding, as a school we are required to provide information to the Department for Education confirming which children meet the government criteria.

Pupil Premium: £1,480 per eligible pupil

Pupils in year groups reception to year 6 recorded as Ever 6 free school meals (FSM) as well as eligible children with no recourse to public funds (NRPF) pupils in these year groups.

If your child is eligible for free school meals or has been in the last six years this will generate pupil premium funding. To be eligible for free school meals you must be in receipt of the appropriate benefits and have submitted an application for free school meals to the Local Authority Benefits Team.

If you qualify for the appropriate benefits, but have chosen not to apply for free school meals, please consider applying. You do not have to take up the free school meal to attract the funding. Free school meals cannot be backdated, so you should only apply if you currently qualify.

Pupil Premium CfC: £2,570 per pupil

Cared for Children (CfC) defined in the Children Act 1989 as one who is in the care of, or provided with accommodation by, an English local authority.

The CfC premium must be managed by the designated virtual school head (VSH) in the local authority that looks after the child, and used without delay for the benefit of the looked-after child’s educational needs as described in their personal education plan.

Pupil Premium Previously Cared for Children (PCfC): £2,570 per pupil

For mainstream and special schools, the pupil premium for 2024 to 2025 will include children recorded in the October 2022 school census who were looked after by an English or Welsh local authority immediately before being adopted, or who left local authority care on a special guardianship order or child arrangements order (previously known as a residence order).

Service Child Premium: £340 per eligible pupil

Service pupil premium is additional funding for schools, but it is not based on disadvantage. It has been combined into pupil premium payments to make it easier for schools to manage their spending.

Schools get £340 in 2024 to 2025 for every pupil with a parent who:

is serving in HM Forces
has retired on a pension from the Ministry of Defence

This funding is primarily to help with pastoral support. It can also be used to help improve the academic progress of eligible pupils if schools deem this to be a priority.

Recovery Premium

The recovery premium grant was part of the government’s package of funding to support pupils whose education was impacted by coronavirus (COVID-19). It was a time-limited grant providing over £300m of additional funding for state-funded schools in the 2021 to 2022 academic year and £1bn across the 2022 to 2023 and 2023 to 2024 academic years.

It was focused on pupil premium eligible pupils and pupils in specialist settings such as special schools, special units and pupil referral units (PRUs). This was because of the additional impact of the pandemic on these students.

However, schools could use it to deliver evidence-based approaches for supporting any pupil based on an assessment of individual need. The recovery premium was allocated using the same data as the pupil premium. This means the following pupils attracted recovery premium funding to schools.

Pupil Eligibility

Recovery premium allocations for mainstream schools were based on pupil premium eligibility. This included:

pupils who were eligible for free school meals (FSM), including eligible children of families who had no recourse to public funds (NRPF)
pupils who had been eligible for FSM at any point in the previous 6 years
children looked after by local authorities, referred to as cared for children (CfC), and children previously cared for by local authorities, referred to as previously looked-after children (PLAC)

For other eligible schools, and special educational needs units in mainstream schools, recovery premium allocations for were be based on all pupils registered at the school.

Reporting Requirements

From the 2023/24 academic year the pupil premium strategy statement must be completed by all schools. This document includes planned usage of the recovery premium. This statement will be uploaded to this page prior to 31st December 2024.

The Leadership Team and Governing Body regularly reviews the impact of how we allocate our Pupil Premium funding to make sure it represents both value for money and has played a direct role in helping pupils to reach their full potential, both academically and socially.