Pupil Premium
Pupil Premium strategy statement
This statement details our school’s use of Pupil Premium (and recovery premium for the 2021 to 2022 academic year) funding to help improve the attainment of our disadvantaged pupils.
It outlines our Pupil Premium strategy, how we intend to spend the funding in this academic year and the effect that last year’s spending of Pupil Premium had within our school.
School overview
| Detail | Data |
|---|---|
| School name | Sutton Coldfield Grammar School for Girls |
| Number of pupils in school | 1220 (y7-11 900) |
| Proportion (%) of Pupil Premium eligible pupils | 9% |
| Academic year/years that our current Pupil Premium strategy plan covers (3 year plans are recommended) |
2021/22 to 2024/25 |
| Date this statement was published | December 2022 |
| Date on which it will be reviewed | December 2023 |
| Statement authorised by | Barbara Minards, Headteacher |
| Pupil Premium lead | Samantha Hart, Assistant Headteacher |
| Governor / Trustee lead | Matt Jeavons |
Funding overview
| Detail | Amount |
|---|---|
| Pupil Premium funding allocation this academic year | £82,700 |
| Recovery premium funding allocation this academic year | £23,184 |
| Pupil Premium funding carried forward from previous years (enter £0 if not applicable) |
£0 |
| Total budget for this academic year If your school is an academy in a trust that pools this funding, state the amount available to your school this academic year |
£105,800 |
Part A: Pupil Premium strategy plan
Statement of intent
We believe that all students will benefit from a continued whole school focus on excellent teaching and learning, personal development and wellbeing. In addition to the whole school approaches, we will identify a number of specific interventions to focus on.
The school will build on its use of the PPG (the Pupil Premium Grant provides additional funding that publicly funded schools in England use to support disadvantaged pupils) by continuing to provide targeted strategies to promote achievement. The school's approach is informed by the 'Teaching and Learning Toolkit' from the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), an independent resource which provides guidance for teachers and schools on how to use their resources to improve the attainment of disadvantaged students. The school will also seek to develop students digital learning skills in line with the future workplace requirements. Further to this we are intending to build relationships with families to gain a better insight to challenges that students may face.
Setting priorities is key to maximising impact and our priorities are as follows:
- Ensuring the highest quality of education is delivered to all students
- Ensuring that all students have access to digital technology to support their learning
- Closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged students and their peers
- Providing targeted academic support for students who are not making the expected progress
- Ensuring that all students have full access to extra-curricular and enrichment opportunities
- Addressing barriers to attainment such as examination skills and subject resources
In our research and planning, we have analysed attendance, SEND and Sleuth (rewards) data and identified that there is no statistically significant gap in any of these fields. This is a clear strength of our provision to all students but we will continue monitoring throughout the year and will respond to any gaps, should any arise.
Challenges
This details the key challenges to achievement that we have identified among our disadvantaged pupils.
| Challenge Number | Detail of challenge |
|---|---|
| 1. |
The GCSE 2022 data demonstrates no significant attainment gap across subjects. We will conduct further analysis to investigate at a subject level and by using mock examination data when this is available. |
| 2. | From conversations and student surveys, we will identify any students who do not have access to a digital device for remote learning. Further to this, we will liaise with students and staff to identify digital skills which are required and any gaps which exist. |
| 3. |
Our safeguarding data shows that disadvantaged students have identified social, emotional and mental health issues, such as anxiety and self-harm. This is particularly driven by academic pressures due to the partial school closures from COVID-19. The 21-22 data shows that 59% of disadvantaged pupils have had a safeguarding concern recorded and have received additional support compared to 27% of all students. |
| 4. |
Our initial research with parents of GCSE disadvantaged students resulted in a 20% return rate in 21-22. This suggests a challenge to communication with families and sharing of information or gaining feedback. |
Intended outcomes
This explains the outcomes we are aiming for by the end of our current strategy plan, and how we will measure whether they have been achieved.
| Intended outcome | Success criteria |
|---|---|
| To maintain and improve attainment amongst disadvantaged students and ensure they can achieve in line with all students | GCSE grades to demonstrate a continued narrowing gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged students. |
| For all students to have good access to a digital device and the opportunity to develop key digital skills |
Conversations and surveys to confirm all disadvantaged students have access to a digital device. To map the provision of digital skills across the school journey: communication, processing information and digital safety. |
| To develop safeguarding and pastoral provision to promote social, emotional and mental health (SEMH) awareness and support for all students |
A developed pastoral team with layers of support for improve student levels of SEMH, to reduce the number of high-level interventions/referrals required for students in the longer term. |
| To support and improve wellbeing, academic resilience and growth mindset for all students, including those who are disadvantaged | Sustained high levels of wellbeing, academic resilience and growth mindset from 2024/25 demonstrated by:
|
| To enhance the frequency and information sharing with families of all students, to support learning and build the relationship with school |
To develop pastoral communications to all families and integrate parent surveys, with some focused Pupil Premium parent surveys. To analyse this information and use it to develop the school’s strategy. |
Activity in this academic year
This details how we intend to spend our Pupil Premium (and recovery premium funding) this academic year to address the challenges listed above.
Teaching (for example, CPD, recruitment and retention)
Budgeted cost: £12,500
| Table Heading | Table Heading | Challenge number(s) addressed |
|---|---|---|
| Developing meta-cognitive and self-regulation skills in all pupils, with a focus on growth mindset. This will involve ongoing teacher training and support. |
Teaching metacognitive strategies to pupils can be an inexpensive method to help pupils become more independent learners. EEF Changing mindsets |
1, 2, 3 |
|
Developing the approach to assessment across the curriculum to include low stakes. This will involve ongoing teacher training and support. |
Low stakes assessment has a range of positive impacts such as: Improved retrieval, knowledge, skills and organisation of learning.
|
1, 2, 3 |
| Developing a school map of digital literacy development. This will involve cross-curricular cooperation and overseeing. |
In 2019, approximately 214,000 job vacancies in the UK were hard to fill because of a lack of skills among applicants, and a third of this skills gap was digital. Times Higher Education |
2 |
Targeted academic support (for example, tutoring, one-to-one support structured interventions)
Budgeted cost: £12,300
| Activity | Evidence that supports this approach | Challenge number(s) addressed |
|---|---|---|
| Supervised study support mentors for GCSE students and character and academic mentoring for all year groups to improve wellbeing, academic resilience and growth mindset. This includes revision packs and revision skills sessions. |
Mentoring with a focus on metacognition and self-regulation enables students to think about their own learning more explicitly and is very high impact. EEF Metacognition and self-regulation |
2, 3, 4 |
Wider strategies (for example, related to attendance, behaviour, wellbeing)
Budgeted cost: £81,000
| Activity | Evidence that supports this approach | Challenge number(s) addressed |
|---|---|---|
|
Ensuring access to an equal school experience to all students, e.g. Free School Meals and a bursary to all students as well as extra-curricular opportunities which are on offer in school, e.g. trips, music lessons and lunchtime activities, all of which support student wellbeing and resilience. |
These elements enhance the cultural capital of our students to support their success in the wider world. Our school values the importance of cultural capital for students to succeed and not just learn within the confines of a subject. This is specifically evidenced when supporting applications to Higher Education or companies (employability skills). |
1, 2, 3, 4 |
| Investment in programmes to enhance students’ wider skills, e.g. SEMH and academic resilience, e.g. independent learning skills. |
Working with a range of providers to deliver training to staff and/or students. Deliver exam anxiety workshops as part of the PSHE programme
Anna Freud Headstart Programme Sleuth |
1, 3 |
| Investment in digital devices and digital skills development. | The working world is predominantly digitally based and so it is important for students to complete school with these key employability skills, as evidenced by company and university requirements. | 2 |
| Develop parental engagement so that families are involved in supporting their child’s academic learning. |
Parental engagement has a positive impact on progress, especially when tailored to show positive dialogue about learning and when personalised. EEF Parental engagement |
4 |
Total budgeted cost: £105,800
Part B: Review of outcomes in the previous academic year
Pupil Premium strategy outcomes
This details the impact that our Pupil Premium activity had on pupils in the 2021 to 2022 academic year.
| Non-Pupil Premium Students | Pupil Premium Students | Overall School Figure | |
|---|---|---|---|
| % who achieved 5 or more GCSE grades 4-9 including English and Maths. | 100 | 100 | 100 |
| Attainment 8 | 80.1 | 78.4 | 80.0 |
The Attainment 8 figures show that there is a small gap between Pupil Premium and non-Pupil Premium students in their GCSEs. The strategies used to raise the achievement of all students and narrow the gap between Pupil Premium students and non-Pupil Premium students are working and need to be maintained.
During the academic year 2021-22, the PPG was used in a variety of ways to support students to close the gap in curriculum and extracurricular opportunities. As a result, it reinforced aspects of our School Development Plan: providing excellent teaching and learning, character development and wellbeing for all students. Examples of additional resources which were made available to students include Educake; this online platform offers revision materials and recap quizzes to help develop memory and retrieval and has been trialled in the sciences this year with a view to rolling it out into other subjects in the next academic year. This has supported our teaching and learning focus on low state retrieval practices. This has had positive results in attainment, as well as contributing towards supporting students with their mental health as it offers a manageable way to revise. We have delivered study skills sessions in Year 10 which covered: practice, using feedback, extended writing, memory, chunking and vocabulary development. In the student evaluation, students’ rating of their exam confidence rose from an average of 5.8 to 6.7 and showed an increased in confidence across all the above-mentioned skills.
We have offered tutoring as part of our targeted academic support as well as Year 12 mentoring. Both support systems have been well received by students and the impact is evident in the narrow gap between Pupil Premium and non-Pupil Premium students. From the Spring Progress Reviews, there has been an average increase of 0.4 grades across the sciences, reflecting the additional provisions in place this year.
The number of safeguarding concerns reported, and support needed has decreased from 59% to 39%. The student support for students has been reviewed and is continuing to be reviewed, to ensure that support is in line with students’ needs. This has included the development of a Mental Health Lead and Student Support and Character Mentor. We have also increased the external services which are available in school and offer mentoring to students. We have conducted two key student surveys. In November 2021 we conducted a whole school survey and in July 2022 Year 7-9 participated in the Breathe survey. These data sets will help to provide baselines to review wellbeing, resilience and mindsets in the coming years.
As restricted access to IT resources can be a barrier to students’ progress, we have continued to narrow any digital divide for students, to support learning outside of the classroom. All pupil premium students are checked to ensure they have digital access at home and school has provided a laptop if this has not been the case. As other requests have come into school we have, so far, been able to offer the loan of a laptop to support learning outside of the classroom.
We have reviewed the key digital skills required for the workplace and from next year, the PSHE programme from Years 7-11 will integrate with our careers programme as well to develop key employability skills.
We have established family surveys which are issued in conjunction with Progress Evenings which allows us to gain feedback from families, as well as offering another opportunity for families to ask questions. From these surveys, we have been able to address specific queries and we also sent an email to answer questions and share more information.
Further information
During 2021-22 the school took part in a Peer Review scheme with local schools to review the mental health provision and need within each school. This research explored initiatives and supported the roll out of Educake to support Year 11 students, as well as Year 11 mentoring in Spring 2/Summer 1 to support students in the lead up to GCSE examinations.