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	Bassingbourn Village College
Number of pupils in school	680
Proportion (%) of pupil premium eligible pupils	14.85%
Academic year/years that our current pupil premium strategy plan covers (3 year plans are recommended)	2021-2024
Date this statement was published	November 2021
Date on which it will be reviewed	March 2021
Statement authorised by	Ms V Poulter, Principal
Pupil premium lead	Mr P Church
Governor / Trustee lead	Mr M Urquhart

Funding overview

Detail	Amount
Pupil premium funding allocation this academic year	£68,760
Recovery premium funding allocation this academic year	£9,768
Pupil premium funding carried forward from previous years (enter £0 if not applicable)	£5,876
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	£84,404

Part A: Pupil premium strategy plan

Statement of intent

· Our vision is that all pupil premium students are successful in applying for post-16 courses. The progress gap between pupil premium and non-pupil premium students is closed, especially in maths and English. Pupil premium students make rapid progress supported by strong classroom teaching and benefiting from whole school initiatives on literacy and numeracy. Pupil premium attendance is close to 95% and parents are fully engaged in the school, attending parent evenings and supporting their child with independent learning.

· Our new pupil premium strategy plan is a continuation of the priorities identified in our previous work. The main challenges for students continue to be focused around our whole school initiatives such as raising literacy, providing a safe, supportive environment for students, engaging with parents, helping to provide resources for disadvantaged students and developing an engaging curriculum that enables all learners to make good progress.

· The key principle in this strategy is knowing our pupil premium students as individuals so that we can remove the barriers to their success.

Challenges

This details the key challenges to achievement that we have identified among our disadvantaged pupils.

Challenge number	Detail of challenge
1	Raising aspirations for post-16 study
2	Lack of access to IT
3	A lack of parental engagement
4	Low levels of literacy
5	Poor attendance – below 90%
6	Raising attainment in English and maths
7	Metacognition and revision activities
8	General well-being

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
Progress 8	Achieve top quartile for progress made by disadvantaged pupils amongst similar schools
Attainment 8	Achieve national average for attainment for all pupils
% Grade 5+ in English and maths	Achieve average English and maths 5+ scores for similar schools
Other	Improve attendance to national average

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: £ [45,000]

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
CPD sessions on literacy and vocabulary	EEF Toolkit +6 months. There are gaps in reading age of up to 2 years between pupil premium and non-pupil premium students in each cohort. Whole school initiatives can reduce this gap by focusing on reading intervention strategies that benefit disadvantaged students. Using Star Reader, we have taken the reading ages of year 7 and 8 which has shown there is a 14 month gap between pupil premium and non-pupil premium students.	Challenge 4
Recruiting strong teachers in maths and English	EEF Toolkit +6 months for high quality feedback and strong classroom teaching. In the current year 11, there is a 0.4 progress gap between PP and non-PP students. Strong classroom teaching has been shown to bridge the gap between PP and non-PP students.	Challenge 6
Maintaining small class sizes in core English and maths classes in 9, 10 and 11.	EEF Toolkit +2 months. Smaller core classes are viewed positively by staff who believe they enable higher quality support in the classroom.	Challenge 7
Developing the use of technology in the classroom through the iPad project	The EEF report into technology in the classroom in 2019 suggested it helped teachers to model good work and give feedback more effectively. We are experimenting with iPads in the classroom for lower ability students, focusing on the accessibility options and the ways it can be used to develop modelling in the classroom. We are using the Apple Elements of Learning book to focus our vision of technology in the classroom.	Challenges 6 and 7

Targeted academic support (for example, tutoring, one-to-one support structured interventions)

Budgeted cost: £ [6,500]

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
Accelerated Reader used to provide reading intervention in Years 7 and 8	EEF Toolkit +6 months for reading programmes that are properly implemented. In previous work with Accelerated Reader at Bassingbourn Village College, disadvantaged students made up to 2 years of progress in their reading age in less than a year.	Challenge 4
School-led tutoring in core subjects	EEF Toolkit +5 months. Evidence shows that students are more likely to attend and benefit from school-led tuition than from outside agencies.	Challenge 6
Metacognition and revision sessions for all students	EEF Toolkit +7 months. Giving students the skills to revise and reflect on their learning has a significant impact on progress when implemented as a whole school initiative. The study into how much more progress disadvantaged students can make through this strategy versus non-disadvantaged is ongoing.	Challenge 7

Wider strategies (for example, related to attendance, behaviour, wellbeing)

Budgeted cost: £ [33,000]

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
Parental engagement to support students with raising their attendance	EEF Toolkit +4 months progress regardless of socio-economic factors according to the 2019 EEF report into the impact of parental engagement. This report showed that the impact is higher on disadvantaged than non-disadvantaged students. For the year 8 parent evening, 87% of parents engaged positively with the process.	Challenges 3 and 5
Well-being support through facilities in the Hive, PSHE lessons, mentor time and achievement leader support.	The 2019 EEF report ‘Healthy Minds: Healthy Outcomes’ showed that projects improving mental health have a significant positive impact on students physically, emotionally and academically. There is a study currently taking place (The Healthy Minds Statistical Analysis Plan) that is looking at the impact of healthy minds interventions on disadvantaged vs non-disadvantaged students at primary and secondary.	Challenge 8
Providing laptops through a school loan system.	Student surveys have shown that up to 15% of pupil premium students do not have adequate technology at home to enable them to access Google Classrooms or study online if isolating. We now have a stock of 41 laptops Wi-Fi ready to use with this scheme. Evidence is also being collated through the PP survey to find students who need to use the loan scheme.	Challenge 2
Aspirational trips and visits and advice and guidance for post-16	As this is a complex area, there is no definitive study that shows its impact. Historically, all PP students from Bassingbourn find appropriate courses for post-16 study and we believe our small community enables us to provide the support that enables this. Despite the disruption, we have managed to give financial help to some PP students to attend aspirational events such as a year 7 team building day which had positive student feedback.	Challenge 1
Developing student well-being and life skills. Enabling students to take a full part in college life and supporting achievement.	Surveying students to find their individual challenges. The PP survey is underway and has provided some important evidence about student aspirations and experience in the classroom. This evidence is being collated in Power BI to share with all staff.	Challenges 1, 4, 6, 7 and 8

Total budgeted cost: £ [84,500]

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 2020 to 2021 academic year.

Our internal assessments during 2020/21 suggested that the performance of disadvantaged pupils was slightly below previous years in terms of progress and attainment.

Our assessment of the reasons for these outcomes points primarily to Covid-19 impact, which disrupted all of our subject areas to varying degrees. As evidenced in schools across the country, partial closure was most detrimental to our disadvantaged pupils, and they were not able to benefit from our pupil premium funded improvements to teaching and targeted interventions to the degree that we intended. The impact was mitigated by our resolution to maintain a high quality curriculum, including during periods of partial closure, which was aided by online lessons from Bassingbourn staff and online resources such as those provided by Oak National Academy.

Our assessments demonstrated that pupil behaviour, wellbeing and mental health were significantly impacted last year, primarily due to COVID-19-related issues. The impact was particularly acute for disadvantaged pupils. We used pupil premium funding to provide wellbeing support for all pupils, and targeted interventions where required. We are building on that approach in our new plan.

Externally provided programmes

Please include the names of any non-DfE programmes that you purchased in the previous academic year. This will help the Department for Education identify which ones are popular in England

Programme	Provider
Accelerated Reader	Renaissance Learning

Part C: Pupil Premium Actions and Strategies by Challenge

Low aspirations for post-16 study	Actions and Strategy
Parental meetings for year 11 applications	PC to support parents during post-16 options process.
Aspirational trips and visits – virtual events	Possibility of trips and visits returning summer 2022. Year 7 PP students supported with payments for team-building day.
Case study about a previous PP student
Participation in Duke of Edinburgh	PP students enlisted in D of E and full price paid.

Lack of access to IT	Actions and Strategy
Computers for PP students	Distribution of new Chromebooks on a loan scheme November 2021.
Use of Read and Write software	Installed on all school computers and G Suite. Training given to students who require readers.
IPad trial	IPad use trialled with small group of students looking at accessibility functions

A lack of parental engagement	Actions and Strategy
Regular parental phonecalls	Parental calls made during lockdown by support staff to most vulnerable PP students.
Raised attendance to parent meetings	PC to track attendance to parent meetings using reports from SchoolCloud and follow up non-attenders.
Mentor engagement with PP parents
Progress follow up phonecalls

Poor attendance – below 90%	Actions and Strategy
Tracking of school attendance	Pupil Premium attendance 87.58% 4/11/2021
Regular attendance meetings	Low attenders supported through regular parental contact
Actions for low attendance by mentors and achievement leaders

Raising attainment in English and maths	Actions and Strategy
Catch-up planning 2021	Catch-up plan references specific PP actions including tutoring for small groups of year 7 and 8 students in maths and Accelerated Reader.
Class sizes in English and maths	Additional staffing means there are six classes in years 9, 10 and 11 in English.
Resources for PP students e.g. texts and revision guides	Resources continued to be distributed during lockdown e.g. Computing textbooks, technology resources and art materials.
Dr Frost and White Rose Maths
School-led tutoring programme	Tuition to be organised in school for core subjects by Bassingbourn staff

Metacognition and Revision Actions	Actions and Strategy
Metacognition training sessions with PP focus	PP focused metacognition sessions in November 2021.
Mentor revision sessions
Questioning and engagement in lessons

General Wellbeing	Actions and Strategy
Use of the YMCA	Twice weekly visits to Hive. 8 PP students currently using the service.
Additional support staff and role of the Hive	One permanent additional staff in the Hive. One part-time.
Staff trained as counsellor – weekly sessions	Friday sessions available.
PP attendance tracked to clubs and activities
Hive revision area 3.30 – 4.30	Started October 2021.
Year 11 exam mental well-being sessions

Archive Pupil Premium Plans can be downloaded:

2017/18: HERE

2018/19 HERE

2019/20 HERE

2020/21 HERE