Pupil Premium & Catch Up

Our school is allocated additional funding through the Pupil Premium Grant every financial year. Our Pupil Premium Report (available below) outlines what the Pupil Premium is and how it has been used to support both individuals and groups of pupils at Westdene Primary School during the past academic year. The impact of the outcomes of individual interventions has also been evaluated. 

As a school, we are commited to ensuring:

• that eligbility for Pupil Premium is never confused with low ability

• that interventions do not compensate for less than good teaching

• that interventions will be monitored and adjusted accordingly to reach desired outcomes

At Westdene Primary, we are commited to providing support that will benefit all children and enable them to achieve highly and enjoy their learning.

All support is carefully planned, monitored and evaluated to ensure that it:

• is effective so that pupil progress and achievement is maximised;

• flexible to work around the classroom timetable;

• meets the needs of the individual children involved;

• is good value for money;

• is inclusive.

We are using our school budget and additional government ‘Catch Up’ funding to provide additional teaching support and teaching assistant time in each year group. All of our teachers have carried out assessments in reading, writing and maths for each child and they know exactly what each child needs to work on to make progress. Targets have been shared with parents/carers at our consultation sessions so that they may be an active partner in their child’s education. 

We recognise that children make most progress when home and school work in close partnership and parental support with children’s learning is greatly appreciated. As a follow up from our assessments, all pupils are receiving targeted teaching in order to ensure appropriate support and challenge. Where gaps in learning have been identified, teachers are revising and fine-tuning planning to ensure it is bespoke to meet the needs of the children in their care. 

Teachers work in teams with the additional adults (who know the children well) to plan and deliver focused teaching, small group work and targeted support and challenge. We review our provision regularly to ensure it is having the desired outcomes; pupil progress reviews ensure teachers and the senior leadership team work in partnership to make strategic decisions so that any additional resources have the maximum impact on our learners. Assessments of learning take place on a daily basis, and our next set of full assessments in Year 1 to Year 6 will be undertaken later this autumn term. The data we glean from these assessments informs our teaching and helps us to track progress, measure success against starting points and enable us to make decisions to further refine provision where needed. 

Early indicators of interventions already underway have been very positive this term so far. We have also invested in online support materials, and some of our new resources such as BUG CLUB have been purchased using our ‘Catch Up’ funding. Resources such as BUG CLUB give all our families access to high quality material. Where there are issues with internet access, our team is working hard to put additional provision in place or find creative solutions to overcome any barriers.