In June, the Government announced a £1 billion of funding to support children and young people to catch up. Further guidance has now been released and can be viewed at www.gov.uk/guidance/coronavirus-covid-19-catch-up-premium. This means The Leys Primary School was in receipt of £33,250 in 2020-21 to help support our pupils.
The recovery premium funding allocation this academic year (2021-22) is approximately £17,255 and 12,960 (provisional) for School-led Tutoring for the Autumn term which is used to support our pupils. Please see the Pupil Premium Strategy for more information on how this is being spent.
Schools have the flexibility to spend their funding in the best way for their cohort and circumstances. To support schools to make the best use of this funding, the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published a support guide for schools with evidence-based approaches to catch up for all pupils. We have considered this when planning our approach for the use of this funding.
Barriers to getting pupils back on track:
Loss of learning due to school closure
Pupil attitudes to learning and resilience and stamina to access learning for longer periods of time
Changes in behaviour, including anxiety, self-esteem and self confidence
Pupils not being able to make links to previous learning
Phonics knowledge and application for pupils in EYFS and KS1
Foundations of learning in Early Years
At The Leys Primary School, this money will be used in order to provide:
Curriculum resources and materials that support “catch up” and the mental health of all pupils.
Additional support staff to develop the outcomes of children who have been identified as needing “catch up” in their learning.
The impact of the expenditure on the educational attainment of pupils at The Leys Primary School will be assessed using:
Termly assessments.
Ongoing teacher assessment and assessment for learning
Assessment tools built into online interventions.
Please see out Covid Catch-Up Overview Document:
Summary 2020-21
The pupil premium is additional funding given to publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.
Schools receive funding for each child registered as eligible for free school meals at any point in the last 6 years. The Pupil Premium is also provided for children in care who have been looked after continuously for at least six months.
Headteachers and school leaders can decide how to use the Pupil Premium.
Parents are strongly encouraged to register their child as eligible for FSM so that each school receives their maximum Pupil Premium entitlement. For more information, follow this link to the HertsDirect website.
Children eligible for the pupil premium grant may face a range of barriers to learning, including emotional, behavioural and social challenges, low self-esteem and low aspirations. As with other children, some may have general learning difficulties such as dyslexia, autism or attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). These may impact upon the pupils' learning and school life in general. They will therefore, require different levels of intervention and support. This targeted intervention is put into place in order to diminish the difference in attainment and progress of disadvantaged children.
The Leys strive to expect the best outcomes for all pupils and we see it as part of our mission to do what we can to redress this inequality. At The Leys, the Pupil Premium funding is focused on supporting this through raising both attainment and aspiration and to address the inequality of opportunity.
This may include:
Achievement and Progress work including the use of additional intervention work to accelerate progress for targeted groups or individuals.
Learning support to enable children to fully access learning and accelerate progress where there are special educational learning needs.
Pastoral Work undertaken to raise self-esteem, provide emotional resilience and extend personal skills.
Out of Hours and Enrichment to ensure that children are given a full opportunity to develop talents in sport and creativity and extending experiences for all children.
We will measure the impact and effect in several ways.
We will always look towards removing the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and other pupils. We will measure our success in how well we close that gap.
Disadvantaged pupils nationally are less likely to achieve higher educational outcomes and go onto further and higher education. We will measure how successful our most able disadvantaged pupils achieve.
Disadvantaged pupils nationally are less likely to have good attendance at school. We will measure our success in how well our pupils attend school.
We will raise the aspirations of our most disadvantaged pupils and ensure equality of access to the curriculum. We will measure our success in how well our disadvantaged pupils engage in school life to realise their dreams and ambitions.
Please see our Pupil Premium Strategy below, which details how we utilise the funding, the actions that we are taking and the impact that it has on our pupils.
Sport and PE is an essential part of daily life at The Leys Primary School and it has been embedded into our school fabric over many years. We have a specialist PE teacher and a full time sports coach who both work with children and staff across all phases of our school. This is fundamental to embedding the importance of physical education at the very first opportunity. Our sports specialists provide the majority of our outstanding provision. This provision is supported by our enthusiastic and passionate class teachers. Our class teachers encourage the children to take an active role in leading a healthy active lifestyle. This is further supported by our amazing whole school Active Umbrella approach. The Active Umbrella approach is our active outdoor learning that happens each week in many different forms: daily mile, afternoon active movement breaks, orienteering, active maths and active literature.
During their PE lessons the children are taught a variety of physical skills and techniques across a wide range of topics and this is further supplemented by the key focus on life skills and the children's ability to use their learning and existing knowledge in other areas of their lives. Our ultimate goal is for all our pupils to develop into the best young version of themselves through the power of sport.
All children at The Leys are fully included in PE and the curriculum offers great breadth and depth ensuring that our children's experiences are positive and enriching no matter what their needs. A versatile, dynamic and adaptable curriculum is imperative for all our pupils to thrive.
The PE staff, alongside class teachers, also run a variety of sports clubs after school to further enrich our children's physical opportunities. We also have a number of different school representative teams throughout the academic year and these teams regularly attend tournaments, fixtures, festivals and competitions. Some of our representative teams include boys and girls football, girls netball, cricket, rounders, tag rugby, dance, handball and athletics. We have currently accessed more sporting events so far this academic year than we did in the whole of last year. We encourage all children to have an active lifestyle and to take part in school competitions and events. Many of our children are members with local sporting clubs and often attend our extracurricular sports opportunities.
• We have an annual sports day for both Early Years/KS1 and KS2.
• All our children in Year 4 swim for one whole year help them gain confidence and proficiency in the water. We take a group of year 6 students each summer term for top up swimming to help them achieve the expected 25m swimming distance.
• We use a fantastic PE app called PE Passport and this provides our class teachers with incredible resources. .
The Government continues to invest in the Primary PE & Sport Premium, as first announced in December 2015 through ‘Sporting Future: A New Strategy for an Active Nation.’ The Leys receive specific sports funding each year to support and enhance the physical education of all our children. The sports premium has had a significant impact on the development of the PE curriculum at The Leys, which has led to incredible experiences and great personal development for our children.
We use a portion of our yearly funding to access Stevenage Sporting Futures, a local charity organisation who provide us with many fantastic opportunities. These opportunities range from: CPD for staff across a range of different sports, they provide local sports leagues for a variety of sports, they upskill sports ambassadors each year who have an amazing impact on our KS1 playground and they also provide a wide range of sporting opportunities both in and out of curriculum time for our pupils at competitive and non-competitive levels. These opportunities have an amazing impact on our young pupils.
The funding is extremely well spent each year with the aim of further improving and developing our provision, curriculum and participation levels. We also aim to provide greater opportunities and experiences for our young children through the power of sport. The expenditure is documented each year to show how we continue to maximise our funding.
We have seen greater participation levels across the school and have seen a huge increase in girls participation in both competitive and non-competitive sport. We have been able to close Covid gaps and accelerate children's progress across the entire PE curriculum, this has been aided by the whole school's active approach. This funding continues to impact our young children daily.
The outcomes are monitored by the Senior Leadership Team (SLT), specialist sports teachers and Governors. A summary of our annual sports spending is detailed in the attached documents below.
We continue to monitor and evaluate the expenditure impact throughout each academic year ensuring that it is having maximum impact on our children and is supporting our sustainable next steps.
Here at The Leys we share, believe and promote the power of sport and the positive impact this has on young children's lives.
Mr Byford
PE Teacher
From April 2015, pre-schools, nurseries, schools and childminders will be able to claim extra funding through the early years pupil premium to support children’s development and learning.
We wanted to write to you to explain what the early years pupil premium is, who is eligible, what it can offer your child, and how you can apply for this additional funding.
The early years pupil premium can provide an extra £302 a year for three and four year old children who have been in care or adopted from care or whose parents are in receipt of certain benefits.
We can use the extra funding in any way we choose to improve the quality of the early years experience that we provide for your child. This could include providing specialist speech and language support or purchasing specialist resources to meet the needs of the child. We will keep you fully informed as to how this money is being spent to benefit your child.
We know that a high quality early education can influence how well a child does at both primary and secondary school so we are very keen to access this funding where we can.
Therefore we ask that all parents complete the registration form. This will allow us to claim the additional early years pupil premium for eligible children. You can either complete the attached copy of the form or you can complete the form online at www.hertsdirect.org/eypp. If you would prefer you can also complete the form online in school where a member of our admin team will be happy to support you successfully through the process.
If you have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact me.
Yours faithfully
Marie Doherty
Pupil Premium Leader