Background

The pupil premium is additional funding that schools in England receive to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers.

The grant per eligible pupil will be £1320 for the current financial year. There is an additional grant of £1900 for all Looked After children.

Pupil Premium funding is targeted at those pupils who are:

• Entitled to Free school meals - or have been entitled in the last 6 years (Ever 6)
• Looked After Children in the care of the Local Authority
• Children from Service families (This is Services Pupil Premium and due to the number of families in receipt of this at Upton-by-Chester High School we administer this grant separately).

Upton by Chester High School

Upton-by-Chester High School is committed to reducing the gap between the performance of Disadvantaged and Non-Disadvantaged learners.  This aim is clearly embedded in all the work that we do as a school. 

Every member of staff has a responsibility that this is foremost in the minds when undertaking any role within the school.  The Director of Emotional Health and Safeguarding has a strategic overview of this area and each of the Directors of Key Stage are responsible for the performance of Disadvantaged learners in their key stage both in terms of emotional health, behaviour and attainment / progress.

The main areas of focus are;

1. Improving the attendance and punctuality of all learners to school.
2. Delivering high quality learning and teaching through our ‘maximising success’ model.
3. Increasing the level of literacy across the whole school with a particular focus on reading.  Ensuring that all learners are able to be both confident and fluent readers and know and use appropriate tier two and three vocabulary across the curriculum.
4. Delivering high quality and impactful interventions to learners across the Key Stages, where required, to boost performance.

Service Pupil Premium

At Upton-by-Chester High School, we welcome learners with families that come from a military background. We are proud of our links with the local army barracks, and currently in our school, 4% of our population (71 learners) are Service Learners.

Upton-by-Chester High School always aims to ensure that the service learners in our school receive support which enables them to succeed.

In 2021 the decision was made that the most effective way to utilise the SPP was to employ a member of staff whose role was, and continues to be, the Service Children Learning Mentor.

This position involves working with our service learners by:

• Building strong links with the local barracks through termly meetings with the army welfare officer and Army community development officer.
• Building strong relationships with learners, regularly meeting them to discuss pastoral and academic progress.
• Being the main point of contact within school for service families.
• Using the Service Children's Progression alliance (SCiP) thriving Lives toolkit to assess our school's provision for service learners.
• Working to improve school's understanding of the needs of service learners.

Upton-by-Chester High School’s Service Children Premium Funding for the 2023/24 financial year was £22,770.