The Use and Impact of the Pupil Premium Grant

Whilst Pupil Premium is allocated according to specific criteria (FSM, CLA and service families) Haywood Grove School is a unique setting where disadvantage/impoverishment and barriers to learning are defined significantly more broadly than in other settings, and include (non-exhaustive):

• Special Educational Needs: all children have Statements or EHC Plans citing social, emotional and mental health difficulties, often in addition to specific diagnoses such as – ADHD, ASD, Aspergers Syndrome, Pathological Demand Avoidance, Oppositional Defiance Disorder, Conduct Disorder, Specific Learning Difficulties, sensory processing difficulties, attachment disorders
• Trauma: many of our children have experienced or are experiencing trauma that has a significant impact on brain function
• Lone parenting (64%) of children and conflict relating to contact with non-resident parent/carer
• Difficult family situations including: Impact of historic or current offending or imprisonment, domestic violence, significant mental health difficulties in parent, drug misuse and abuse, impact of child’s needs on well-being of family and other siblings
• Disrupted schooling including: permanent exclusion from mainstream or other specialist provision, part-time and reduced timetables, experience of residential educational settings
• Low income families: in receipt of state benefits, receiving support from Thriving Families, falling above the FSM threshold, financial difficulties, temporary or poor accommodation
• Additional physical/medication/medical issues
• Children subject to a Child Protection plan
• Children in Need
• Families with a Families First Assessment
• Children with English as an additional language
• Children whose attendance is poor
• Children with low attainment/progress

The exceptionality of our context, (where education and care overlap and where all children are identified as vulnerable and potentially disadvantaged), requires a unique approach that responds rapidly to the changing needs of our unconventional and sometimes changing cohort of children. Therefore, as a matter of course we try to ensure that even our most basic provision alleviates many of the endemic disadvantages identified for our children and our bespoke and individualised interventions, provide a creative, responsive and proactive set of solutions to the challenges experienced by our most disadvantaged. In other words our overall package of support for eligible children is comprehensive, well-integrated and responsive to changing needs. The school puts in place a balanced programme of whole school targeted and specialist support that takes into account the needs of all children. Funding is therefore not ring-fenced as it might be in other educational settings.