What is the Pupil Premium Grant?

Ashcroft Technology Academy (ATA) receives a proportion of its overall annual funding in the form of a Pupil Premium Grant (PPG). The PPG is allocated in respect of children from low-income families who are, or have been, eligible for free school meals (FSM), within the last six years. The grant is also provided with regard to children of service personnel and children who are looked after by the local authority (LAC).

What are our aims for the Pupil Premium Grant?

Our aims for the PPG are to identify, create and implement strategies that help to increase social mobility and reduce the attainment gap that exists nationally between the most and least disadvantaged students. ATA places a strong emphasis on secure foundations in literacy, numeracy, behaviour, positive routines and personal ambition because we believe that our disadvantaged students require most support in these important areas to be successful. Furthermore, we believe that strong literacy and numeracy, positive attitudes, courteous behaviour and a strong work ethic, supported by individual ambition, are crucial in preparing all our students for life beyond the Academy, regardless of their ability or background.  The performance data in 2024 demonstrates that the Academy has been very successful in achieving this and that students perform incredibly well.

Who benefits from the Pupil Premium Grant?

At ATA, we ensure that the PPG benefits all students but has the most benefit for those with the greatest disadvantage. Our intention, therefore, is to build capacity and maximise our impact by creating an Academy-wide understanding of excellent classroom practice and support.  ATA welcomes a large proportion of disadvantaged children each year.  This means that many of the interventions we put in place are shared by all children but have the greatest benefit to and impact on students from disadvantaged backgrounds. We do this because we wish to promote good progress for all children; and this is borne out in the results all of our students achieve at the end of Key Stage 4.

What barriers do students eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant face?

The barriers and challenges disadvantaged students face are complex, varied and characteristic of our context: there is no single difficulty faced by all. However, from experience, we have identified a number of barriers that we believe are particularly relevant to our disadvantaged children.

• Potential to be less aspirational and, in many cases, have not yet learnt about possible futures
• Potential to have lower confidence and self-esteem than their peers
• Potential for limited access to school trips and extra-curricular enrichment activities
• Potential for limited access to support for learning beyond the classroom
• Potential for a less structured learning environment at home
• Potential to be more easily distracted in their learning
• Reticence to complete homework independently
• Relatively weak literacy
• Relatively weak numeracy

How do we decide how to spend the Pupil Premium Grant?

We allocate our PPG to resources that are designed to close the gaps in these areas.  Our interventions are research informed, context specific and improved over time as we learn from experience with each cohort.  The interventions include, but are not limited to:

• Inclusive Care and Support (ICAS) exists to support the consistent application of the Academy’s behaviour policy.  Students develop good routines and are provided with focused mentoring, when needed, to overcome potential barriers to their learning. This has been particularly important after the disruption caused by the global pandemic.
• Measures and staff members to promote attendance and punctuality.
• Reduced contact teaching time for members of the Leadership Group to work with parents in order to achieve better routines and work ethic in students.
• Reduced contact teaching time for Heads of Year and members of the Leadership Group to allow time to be spent on monitoring performance and identifying and implementing interventions for students.
• Support programmes in the Learning Support department and in ICAS, including homework club, transition programmes, key skills development, emotional and behavioural support in small groups.
• Access to ICT and study resources as well as books for wider reading, before and after the main Academy day
• Peer mentoring programmes and peer reading programmes
• Provision of additional teaching staff in English, Maths and French to create small extra, low ability sets and intervention sets in Years 7 to 11 to support performance at GCSE.
• Programmes to develop effective study skills in Years 10 and 11. Targeted Careers-related interventions.
• Financial assistance towards school trips.
• Financial assistance towards music lessons.

PPG funding arrangements

PPG funding has existed since April 2011, and the annual amount received by ATA over time is shown below.  In some cases, the total figure does not match with the number of students who qualify for additional funding.  This is because a small minority of the students in this group may attract a higher amount of funding because they are post-guardianship children or children of services personnel.

PPG funding is received on a quarterly basis and paid in arrears. The figures shown below are in-line with the pupil premium allocation statements ATA receives from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA), but these figures are always subject to some in-year adjustments to reflect changes in personal circumstances.  These figures are revised each financial year and not each academic year and are therefore recorded differently in ATA’s year-end accounts.

	2023-24	2022-23	2021-22	2020-21	2019-20	2018-19	2017-18	2016-17	2015-16
Number of Yr. 7 – 11 students on roll	1208	1173	1064	1072	1058	1,030	1,054	1,056	1,054
Number of PPG Students*	357.6	353.5	339.5	361	406	425	455.5	477	506
Rate per Student	£1,035	£985	£955	£955	£935	£935	£935	£935	£935
Pupil Premium Funding*	£370,145	£333,333	£324,223	£344,755	£381,480	£397,375	£425,892	£445,995	£473,110

* does not include LAC.

 

During the academic year 2023 to 2024, the ESFA made additional payments to schools in the form of Recovery Premium and School Led Tutoring funding.  These additional funding streams are intended to help schools provide additional support to students who they believed had fallen further behind in their academic progress as a result of two school closures. ATA welcomed this much needed additional support, which it added to its PPG to provide further interventions which benefited the students who had been most affected. 

The costs met directly by the PPG during the academic year 2023 to 2024 are as follows. Some of these costs are met by the Recovery Premium funding as the income received in the year does not fully cover the costs incurred:

 

Staffing Related	£
Learning Mentors/Asst Learning Mentors/Temp ICAS  – full cost	357,824
Counselling and external mentoring provision	3,200
Education Welfare & Attendance Officer – 50% cost	23,030
Specific DSL interventions – 10% DSL costs	10,829
Heads of Year – 5% across the year	20,227
LRC provision prior to school	2,184
Other Related Costs
Direct pupil support - clothing grants/vouchers etc.	3,905
ICAS running costs	1,415
Journey Grants inc. Travel support	1,328