St Columba’s Pupil Premium

St Columba’s Overview of Pupil Premium Funding

Purpose

The pupil premium grant provides funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.

The service pupil premium (SPP) provides support for children and young people of service families. It is combined into pupil premium payments to make it easier for schools to manage their spending. Pupils that the SPP intends to support are not necessarily from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.

St Columba’s use the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), to use this funding effectively to drive high and rising standards for disadvantaged pupils.

Funding criteria

Pupil premium funding is allocated to eligible schools based on the number of:

• pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals, or have been recorded as eligible in the past 6 years (referred to as Ever 6 FSM)
• children previously looked after by a local authority or other state care, including children adopted from state care or equivalent from outside England and Wales

Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils, and schools do not have to spend pupil premium so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. It can be used:

• to support other pupils with identified needs, such as those who have or have had a social worker, or who act as a carer
• for whole class interventions which will also benefit non-disadvantaged pupils

Pupil premium funding is allocated to local authorities based on the number of:

• looked-after children, supported by the local authority
• pupils who meet any of the eligibility criteria and who attend an independent setting, where the local authority pays full tuition fees

For pupils who are looked-after children, funding should be managed by the local authority’s virtual school head (VSH)  in consultation with the child’s school.

Details of the funding criteria for SPP is outlined in the Service pupil premium section.

Eligible schools

The following types of school are eligible to receive an allocation of pupil premium.

Local authority-maintained schools

These include:

• mainstream infant, primary, middle, junior, secondary and all-through schools serving pupils in year groups reception to year 11
• schools for children with special educational needs or disabilities and general hospital schools
• pupil referral units (PRUs), for children who do not go to a mainstream school

This table shows pupil premium grant allocations to schools and local authorities in the 2025 to 2026 financial year, based on per pupil rates.

Use of the pupil premium

It’s up to school leaders to decide how to spend the pupil premium. This is because school leaders are best-placed to assess their pupils’ needs and use funding to improve attainment.

At St Columba’s we use a tiered approach

Evidence suggests that pupil premium spending is most effective when schools use a tiered approach, targeting spending across the following 3 areas below but focusing on teaching quality - investing in learning and development for teachers.

Teaching

Schools arrange training and professional development for all their staff to improve the impact of teaching and learning for pupils.

Academic support

Schools should decide on the main issues stopping their pupils from succeeding at school and use the pupil premium to buy extra help.

Wider approaches

This may include non-academic use of the pupil premium such as:

• school breakfast clubs
• music lessons for disadvantaged pupils
• help with the cost of educational trips or visits
• speech and language therapy

Schools may find using the pupil premium in this way helps to:

• increase pupils’ confidence and resilience
• encourage pupils to be more aspirational
• benefit non-eligible pupils

Non-eligible pupils

Schools can spend their pupil premium on pupils who do not meet the eligibility criteria but need extra support.

Example

Schools can use the pupil premium to support other pupils, for example, if they:

• are in contact with a social worker
• used to be in contact with a social worker
• are acting as a carer