To dislike the fact my child is assumed to be failing

[sandsandthesea]

Because she’s on free school meals?

Just because you are in receipt of free school meals, that does not mean you are inevitably going to fail

So the child with a German nanny is equally likely to pass German?
The child who gets tuition in literacy or French isn't going to score higher?

It's about closing the gap.

Some kids have a greater advantage in life because the parents pay for that advantage through outsourcing their off springs education via music or arts - visit theartres or ski trips,

If you think your child is OK that's great - but she's still at a disadvantage

No- children falling behindwhat they are capable of, not behind their peers. Which very many children on FSM do. Through no fault of their parents.

It's all well and good saying "my DC is doing ok so shouldn'r have extra" or yo start suggesting that it's 'humiliating' to go and have extra because they don't 'need' it but the fact remains that PP students do on average underperform compared to more advantaged pupils.

A child who is PP may well be doing ok based on their progress from KS2 / DC is getting a C so they don't need extra etc but that doesn't mean they are achieving their full potential.

It comes back to what another poster and I have said, results in area of high deprivation tend to be noticeably lower than those in more affluent areas. Are people seriously suggesting that children from more deprived areas are inherently less capable? Are we saying that the absence of higher grades in such schools is because the children couldn't possibly have it in them? Are we saying that the higher proportion of top grades in middle class areas is because those children are just brighter?

If it is known that PP children generally benefit from a bit of extra then why anyone would not want their child to access it is beyond me.

how would you feel if your own child was being singled out because YOU were being deemed to be providing an inadequate environment for learning?

I am n exactly this position, albeit in the Early Years area, and my son is achieving significantly above expected levels, but I am not so confident in his perfection that I am going to turn down help that is offered to him just because I think the way the funding is allocated has flaws. There are always ways to stretch children, to provide them with additional opportunities and to provide new ways for them to learn so why not make the most of them.

OP - have you asked if there's anything that she could do that would appeal to her more than the current offering?

Coming off free school meals doesn't help, you remain eligible for PP for years afterwards, well you used to might have changed.

Only children falling behind their peers should be eligible for extra tuition. Being somewhere in the middle of the class for an intelligent child means they are falling behind their peers of similar intelligence.

My DC have Pupil Premium. This is because for a short time when their dad and I split up, I wasn’t working and so they had FSM. So although our situation is very different now, because they had FSM within the last 6 years, they are included within Pupil Premium.

I realise that many posters on mumsnet have clever children, but I am pretty sure that they are above average in general. As far as I can tell, they haven’t had any targeted support, but I’m not sure that there is any gap to be bridged in their case.

This year, we have had parents evening appointments booked for us (I presume that PP children less likely to attend). Does save me getting up early on Tuesday morning to fight with the online system I suppose.

If either of them had had to leave normal lessons to have intervention I don’t think they would have liked it, so it’s probably a good thing they haven’t.

I think there may well be children who would benefit more, but realise that statistically they are likely not to perform to their potential and that there has to be some way to assess how best to allocate funds.

Steppemum so if an fsm child is achieving in line with expectations for their age with no support whatsoever, you don't believe that some targeted support could make them above average*

that is not the point though.
It is not about what I think, what I was trying to say was what the law required and what the paw has to prove.

So, the law requires the school to use the PP money to close the gap between the acheivement of PP kids and non PP kids. This is done using hard data. It is all about number crunching.

so, in class 1, there are 2 PP kids, and their results in English and Maths is lower than the schools average for that class.

Their progress is below the progress of the rest of the class.

The money is to close the gap.

If the child is on track with the rest of the class, then goal has been acheived.

Of course any child with support can do better, but that isn't the goal of the money.

Which is why any school doing their PP funding the way some PP have suggested, by showing what is spent on each child, is not following what they are supposed to do.
The requirement is not to show how much you have spent on child A, the requirement is to show that child A is the same and the non PP kids in the class.

In practice, the money is spent in many different ways, eg our breakfast club used to be subsidized by PP funding. But under the last PP review, we ha dot show how many of the kids using it were PP and very few were, so the subsidy has had to be reduced.