Pupil Premium

Ambition and Opportunity for Every Student

At The Vyne Community School, we are ambitious for every young person.

We believe that a student's circumstances should never determine the limits of their ambition or achievement. Every student deserves an excellent education, high expectations and access to the experiences and opportunities that will enable them to thrive.

Our approach to Pupil Premium is therefore rooted in our DOVE value of Opportunity and our commitment to ensuring that every student can aim high, believe in themselves and achieve their full potential.

We recognise that some young people face additional barriers to their education. Our responsibility is to understand those barriers, respond to them effectively and ensure that they do not prevent students from participating fully in school life or achieving academically.

What is Pupil Premium?

Pupil Premium is additional government funding provided to schools to improve educational outcomes for eligible students.

The funding is intended to help schools address the impact that disadvantage can have on educational achievement and wider opportunities.

At The Vyne, we use Pupil Premium funding strategically, drawing on evidence, our knowledge of individual students and careful evaluation of impact.

Our approach is not based on the assumption that all disadvantaged students face the same challenges. Every young person is different, and the barriers affecting their learning, participation or achievement can also be different.

Understanding those individual needs is fundamental to providing the right support.

Excellent Teaching and High Expectations

The most important provision we can offer every student is consistently high-quality teaching. We therefore place excellent classroom teaching at the centre of our Pupil Premium strategy.

We maintain high expectations for disadvantaged students and ensure that they have access to the same ambitious curriculum as their peers. Where students need additional support to access that curriculum successfully, we identify this and intervene appropriately.

Support may include academic intervention, additional teaching, literacy and numeracy support, mentoring or other targeted provision according to individual need.

Our aim is not simply to help students catch up. It is to enable them to participate fully and achieve highly.

Removing Barriers

Barriers to achievement are not always academic.

Attendance, confidence, access to resources, financial pressures, wellbeing, previous experiences of education and opportunities beyond the classroom can all influence a young person's experience of school.

Our pastoral, SEND, safeguarding, attendance and curriculum teams work together to understand the needs of individual students and families and identify where additional support may make a difference.

This reflects both Opportunity and Empathy: understanding the circumstances of individual young people while ensuring those circumstances do not lower our aspirations for them.

Access to the Wider Life of the School

We believe strongly that educational opportunity extends beyond lessons.

Trips, visits, sport, the arts, our Combined Cadet Force, leadership opportunities, careers experiences, university visits, clubs and other co-curricular activities can broaden horizons, build confidence and help young people discover interests and talents they did not know they had.

We do not want financial circumstances to prevent students from participating in the wider life of The Vyne.

Where appropriate, Pupil Premium funding and other school resources are used to help remove barriers to participation so that disadvantaged students can benefit from the rich range of experiences available through school.

We encourage parents and carers to speak to us if financial or practical circumstances are preventing their child from accessing an opportunity.

Raising Aspirations

Young people's ambitions are influenced by what they experience, the people they meet and what they come to believe is possible for them.

Raising aspirations is therefore an important part of our approach.

Through careers education, encounters with employers, further and higher education, enrichment, mentoring and exposure to different pathways, we help students understand the range of possibilities available beyond school.

We want every student to leave The Vyne able to make informed and ambitious choices about their future.

A young person's starting point should never become their destination.

Working in Partnership

Parents and carers are essential partners in supporting children's education.

We encourage families to communicate with us if there are circumstances affecting their child's attendance, learning, wellbeing or ability to participate fully in school life.

Sometimes relatively small interventions can remove significant barriers. By working together and identifying concerns early, we can provide support where it is most likely to make a difference.

Evaluating Our Impact

We have a responsibility to ensure that Pupil Premium funding makes a meaningful difference to the young people it is intended to support.

We therefore monitor the academic progress, attendance, participation and wider outcomes of disadvantaged students and evaluate the impact of the strategies we put in place.

Our approach is informed by evidence about effective practice and by our understanding of the particular needs of students at The Vyne.

We regularly review our strategy so that resources remain focused on the areas where they can have the greatest impact.

Our Pupil Premium Strategy

Our statutory Pupil Premium Strategy Statement provides detailed information about:

• the challenges we have identified;
• how Pupil Premium funding is allocated;
• the evidence informing our approach;
• the strategies and interventions we use;
• how we measure their impact; and
• how our strategy is reviewed.

Our current Pupil Premium Strategy Statement can be accessed below. At its heart, however, our commitment is straightforward:

We will know our students, understand the barriers they face, maintain high expectations and work to ensure that every young person has the opportunity to succeed.