Pupil Premium

1. Home
2. Our School
3. Pupil Premium

Pupil Premium is additional funding provided by the Government for students who fit into any of the following categories:

• students who are looked after (this now includes those previously adopted)
• students entitled to free school meals
• children of armed forces personnel

Each year Nottingham Free School will be allocated a set amount of pupil premium funding based on the numbers of students who fit into the above categories. This is not part of the general budget and we are directed to use this funding on resources/activities which raise the achievement of the identified students.

Our cohorts have the following proportion of pupil premium students:

Our ambition for our disadvantaged students is taken directly from our academic intent “We strive for every learner at Nottingham Free School to experience transformative academic and personal growth empowering them to become global citizens making the world a kinder, more tolerant and sustainable place to live.” and this is especially important for our disadvantaged students who face additional challenges in their academic journey.

Our Pupil Premium strategy has three key pillars:

1. LEARNING: We deliver a Priority First Approach for our disadvantaged students. In our classrooms, disadvantaged students are prioritised first for understanding, feedback and questioning. Thus, we can empower our disadvantaged pupils to develop their resilience, ambition and confidence – core skills for any successful learner. High quality teaching underpins all academic progress; we dedicate weekly sessions to strong CPDL developing staff knowledge and skills of successful pedagogy and research to ensure our teachers are reflective practitioners who constantly seek ‘marginal gains’ in their teaching style to ensure all students make progress. Finally, we prioritise our disadvantaged students for specific, small-group intervention programmes for English, maths and science.

2. ENGAGEMENT: We work closely with our disadvantaged students to build a profile of their learning needs which is shared with all staff enabling us to build a ‘team around the child’ to ensure they are fully supported in their studies and can fulfil their potential. Our disadvantaged students in Y11 receive one-to-one weekly mentoring with a member of SLT. Our students are given individual guidance for exam preparation and work closely with a staff member to ensure they have a clear and realistic ‘vision’ for their post 16 options. We strive for positive parental engagement with weekly contact from their child’s mentor.

3. TRACKING: Our attendance officer, Heads of Year and pastoral team work closely to monitor attendance and punctuality challenging students to have above 95% attendance. We work closely with families to put support plans in place when required. Our behaviour team work closely with students who need additional support in regulating their behaviour. SLT track attitude to learning grades, attendance and current performance from student reports. Interventions is decided from this data and, for our exam year groups, discussed in weekly mentor meetings.

Please see the Pupil Premium Funding document at the top of this webpage for a detailed breakdown of how the pupil premium money is used at Nottingham Free School.