Service Pupil Premium
Service pupil premium is additional funding for schools with pupils who have parents serving in the armed forces. It has been combined into pupil premium payments to make it easier for schools to manage their spending.
Pupils in state-funded schools in England attract the service pupil premium grant, at the rate of £335 per eligible pupil in financial year 2023-24, if they meet one or more of the following criteria:
- one of their parents is serving in the regular armed forces, including pupils with a parent who is on full commitment as part of the full-time reserve service - this includes pupils with a parent who is in the armed forces of another nation and is stationed in England
- registered as a ‘service child’ on any school census in the past 6 years
- one of their parents died while serving in the armed forces and the pupil receives a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the War Pensions Scheme
This funding is primarily to enable schools to offer pastoral support and help mitigate the negative impact of family mobility or parental deployment.
Service Premium 23-24 website version.pdf
How do we use our Service Pupil Premium ?
We use the Service Pupil Premium Grant funding to ensure our service children receive the highest quality of education to enable them to become active, socially responsible citizens of the future. Our intention is that all children, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face make good progress and achieve high attainment across all subject areas. The focus of our strategy is to support service family children to achieve that goal.
Children from military backgrounds, often require additional support during particularly challenging times. At Shipton Bellinger it is our aim to ensure they have access to a wide range of resources and interventions to support them in reaching their full potential. High-quality teaching is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on areas in which disadvantaged children require the most support.
Our funding is used to;
- monitor service children’s progress compared to the wider school population to ensure that they learn, develop and achieve their own expected level of progress through intervention strategies and support are put into place to support their learning
- provide a trained Teaching assistant to provide pastoral support and guidance for families
- provide opportunities to work with individuals to build social skills, self-esteem and develop positive attitudes to learning thus raising academic attainment
- extra-curricular activities to enable service children to take part in certain activities that may not have been available to them due to the absence of one of their key adults.
- Wild area activities to provide a different experience: the children have really enjoyed being able to learn outdoors and this has provided great chances to develop children’s self-esteem and confidence. It also provides an outlet to provide emotional support for children who need it
- Provide a club for children to share experiences with others , write letters to deployed parents and receive emotional support from trained staff
- Provide a club, run by a qualified sports coach which allows enrichment and social interaction
As with everything we do at school the measures put into place do make a positive difference. They help to ensure that our service children become tolerant, caring and well-rounded individuals with the skills to enable them to learn, develop and progress
Primarily the measures we have put in place help service children to access peers/adults that they feel they can approach and talk to that can reassure, help and if necessary advise. This enables them to achieve and progress without any disadvantage due to parental service.