Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium
The Pupil Premium is additional funding allocated to schools with pupils on roll that are identified as disadvantaged (free school meals pupils, children looked after or previously looked after and children of service personnel). It was introduced to enable disadvantaged pupils to make good academic progress and close the gap between themselves and their peers.
Schools have the freedom to spend the Pupil Premium, which is additional to the underlying schools budget, in a way they think will best support the raising of attainment for the most vulnerable pupils.
Free School Meals Eligibility
To be entitled to free school meals parents must be receiving one of the following support payments:
- Income Support
- Employment Support Allowance (Income Related)
- Income Based Job Seekers Allowance
- Guaranteed Pension Credit
- Child Tax credit and the assessed family income does not exceed £16,190. Parents receiving Working Tax Credit are not entitled regardless of the level of assessed income.
- Children of Asylum Seekers who receive support from Social Services are entitled as are those children who receive Income Support in their own right.
You may be entitled and not even realise
As a school, we have recently signed up to a new system that helps us to identify where families may be entitled to free school meal support in school.
It enables us to pick up families that may not even realise their entitlement or those for whom a brief change in circumstances at some point during their time at our school means they are eligible. It also avoids the onerous forms that need to be completed by families if/when they think they are eligible as once your details are submitted, the system automatically checks for you every week. For this reason, even if you aren’t currently eligible and think you never will be, we are still asking you to sign up.
If you are already in receipt of free school meals, you do not need to do anything as you already have everything in place.
Benefits;
- The system is fully supported by the DfE and fully GDPR compliant.
- School do not see any of your personal details, we only get notified if your child is to be added to the FSM list.
- The system automatically checks each week if you are entitled to FSM’s.
- Even if you are between jobs for a small amount of time, the system will pick it up and give you the entitlement.
- A free school meal pupil will be entitled to a free school meal every day, worth up to £437 per year per child.
- For each free school meal pupil a school has, school receive £1385 per year extra. Even if your child does not want the meal, school will still receive the extra funding.
- Once you have been awarded FSM you will stay on the list until your child leaves us in Year 6, even if your circumstances change.
- No one will know you have registered and it will not affect any other benefits you are claiming.
- Applying is easy!
To complete an application you will need to provide:
- Your own name and date of birth
- Contact details
- National Insurance Number or National Asylum Seekers Number
- Child’s name and date of birth
- School your child is attending/will attend.
So, if you ARE NOT currently receiving FSM’s, please apply using this link:
Alternatively, you can also apply for free school meals by following this link to the Warwickshire free school meals team or you can contact the team by calling 01926 359189. Parents are not required to provide evidence of the benefit as checks will be made using data held by the Department for Education.