Pupil Premium
This financial year (2021/22) the government provided the school with £19,080 to support the attainment of children currently (or previously) receiving free school meals or in the care of the local authority. The number of children in this group is small and so it is difficult to identify common barriers to their learning. Being a member of this group does not automatically mean they have lower levels of emotional resilience, or difficulties with reading and writing, but some do. The money is being spent on a number of programmes to support improvements in their academic outcomes and their emotional resilience. This is done through paired tuition with a teacher; or teaching assistant lead support groups in or out of the classroom. Some children in KS2 benefit from whole class music tuition.
These programmes were selected after reference to the EEF (Education Endowment Foundation) teaching and learning tool kit and have been continued because we can see the increased levels of self regulation, resilience and academic attainment they support. Children are placed on different programmes according to their academic and emotional needs. The impact of the programmes is measured through teacher assessment (and formal pencil and paper tests for junior aged children) and is shared publicly in a section at the end of the PP report below.
Governors will be reviewing the impact of this year's expenditure in April 2022, ready to set next year's budget. and again will share this publicly on the next draft of the plan. Money provided in the previous financial year was spent on similar interventions and those children were more emotionally stable, had good school attendance and had additional teaching on areas of the curriculum they found a particular challenge. We believe they made more progress than they would otherwise have done because of their involvement in these programmes.
Pupil Premium Statement 2022-2023
PE and Sports Funding
At Risley School our vision for PE and sports is to promote:
- Physical activity and an understanding its contribution to health and well being
- Growing self-confidence and resilience
- Children's cooperation to achieve common goals including:
- Enjoyment and pride through participation in physical activity and sports, both in and out of school
- Enjoyment and pride in excellence in physical activity and sports, both in and out of school
Sports funding for financial year 2021/22 was £17,166 and detailed plans for the expenditure can be found in our PE Strategy 2021-2022
In summary, it was used to sustainably improve the quality of PE for children through the employment of a sports HLTA (until January 2022), more professional development for teachers; the provision of small group support for children so they could participate in competitions (including funding transportation costs) and increased use of physical activity to make learning for younger children more engaging.
Historically, our previous expenditure (financial year 2020/21) allowed the retention of a sports HLTA for 12 hours a week. She has led small group activities that have increased participants skills, confidence and resilience. She has also increased links with a local secondary school and we have used their facilities and staff to deliver activities (hockey) that we could not do so successfully here. To promote competitive activities for all children we run inter house competitions. These were reorganised by the sports leaders and sports TA to allow more skills development before they were undertaken. This has meant nearly all children could compete with greater skill.
We have been able to continue to offer after school sports clubs and competitions. We have competed in football and netball. We have also had tennis club.
Lacrosse was continued as a new sport and continues to be enjoyed by nearly all children. We have invested in additional equipment.
Governors have reviewed the pupil premium and PE expenditure to help set the budget for the following year.
Our core school swimming programme is not funded by the PE and sports funding. Governors have funded swimming for 30 weeks a year for selected children. In previous years 100% of year six children left being able to achieve at least 25m in swimming in different quality strokes and basic life saving. In academic year 2019/20 this was 89% because we had to stop our swimming programme early (March 2020) because of Covid-19 restrictions and in academic year 2020/21 we had no swimming programme because of Covid-19. In September 2021 we took all of our year six children swimming, plus some year fives. In May 2022 92% of year six can swim to the National Curriculum standard. Those year six children who cannot yet will receive lessons until the end of the academic year.
Covid Catch Up
We are employing 8.33 hours additional teaching assistant support for our vulnerable children until summer 2022. We have purchased a structured reading scheme for key stage 2 including high interest age but lower reading age materials. Teachers will provide small group catch up work after school for selected children. The effectiveness of these methods will be assessed through standardised tests. We have also participated in the National Tutoring Programme to provide selected children in years five and six with small group tuition in reading skills. Teachers have also provided additional maths teaching after school to year six children as part of our School Led Tuition. This last programme in now being supported by a TA providing maths knowledge to children in year five.