School pupil premium

[RooCluckers]

Hi all,

I have recently been made aware that my dd1's school receive a pupil premium for her (despite her being in school 2 years). I have a meeting to talk about my dd's additional needs and am hoping they put a plan in place to manage her anxiety at school.

Basically she is really anxious at school but is too afraid to ask about things so she behaves really well at school and then comes home and displays lots of anxiety related challenging behaviour. As we are not at school with her it can take quite awhile to work out what the problem is!

I was wondering if others of you know what you dcs schools spend this money on and how they support your children?

Thanks

[Thehedgehogsong]

The pupil premium money has previously been added into the pot and schools could justify spending it on anything that would benefit all students, including the PPI students.

However, things are changing, and now the money should be ring fenced and schools should demonstrate what they are doing with the funds. It could be to fund counselling, or anything that's a barrier such as not having the right equipment for lessons. Parents are slowly being given more say now, and rightfully so!

Hopefully the school making you aware is the first step to getting more involvement from you.

[Jamfilter]

What happens in our LA apparently is all the pupil premium money goes into one pot for the LA, with a "virtual school" team as the guardians, and then schools apply to them for what they feel the pupils in question need. One hopes this is done with the involvement of parents and/or specialists, but I'll be finding out soon!

[Lilka]

The school need to be using the PP+ money to support the individual child it has been allocated to, and they are accountable to OFSTED in doing that. They should also be involving parents in coming to decisions about what use of the money will best support the individual child with whatever they most need extra support in.

I would suggest you organise a meeting with the school to discuss the use of your DC's PPP, ask what the school perceive as the areas your DC most needs support in, and you also tell the school what you see as your childs areas where support might be helpful. That was the starting point for my DS school and me, to all talk about DS and how we think he's doing and what we all saw as areas he was struggling in. You can remind the school if necessary that PPP needs to be used to support the individual child NOT put in one big pot and used on interventions for ALL children (unless a particular say, whole class intervention, is judged by you all to be likely to help your child on an individual level as well). The Sutton Trust toolkit has evidence based analysis of lots of different possible interventions, might be worth a look.

There is a really knowledgable poster called Tethersend who could tell you everything you could possibly want to know about how PPP is supposed to work and what the school should be doing.

But there are many different interventions that could be helpful to different children, depends totally on where their needs lie - is your child behind in certain subject areas much more than others and would they benefit from extra support with those subjects? Or, like my DS, do they struggle more with their behaviour, managing their emotions or social skills? (That's where DS school are targetting the intervention. I was involved in deciding this, but we're all very much on the same page that this is his most pressing difficulty in school). Money can also be spent on things like providing teacher training on a specific issue eg. managing attachment issues/disorder in the classroom. Or on providing equipment access, if your child needs that. The school can pay a third party to provide something to a child, which cant be provided by anyone at school. The support doesn't even have to be provided within school hours if there's an intervention that would be better provided 'out of hours'. Home tuition, extra-curricularum trips etc. It totally depends on what your child needs to help them reach their potential in school.

HTH

[RooCluckers]

Thanks all. Think I definitely need to chat with the school. I feel that as she's not acting out at school she's not really seen as a priority. I felt a bit fobbed off last time I met with them and it definitely helps to know a bit more about what I should ask about.