Pupil Premium

The Pupil Premium was introduced in 2012 by the government of the day and has remained since as an extra allocation of funding given to schools to address the underlying inequalities between students eligible for free school meals (FSM) and their peers. It is for each individual school to decide exactly how this money is spent with the aim to ensure that any gaps between those students who are eligible to bring the funding in and their peers. 

At The Royal Liberty School a significant proportion of students are disadvantaged (eligible for the pupil premium  = 19% December 2025), whilst across all schools in England this figure is 27% (according to gov.uk). We will always endeavor to apply our school motto ‘Where boys are ambitious, where boys succeed’ to all students regardless of their socio-economic background. As such we will use this funding in many ways in order to ensure  all students:

• Can strive for improvements in attainment and progress and the closing of relative national gaps with peers

• Are able to fully access the curriculum

• Enjoy full participation in extracurricular activities and increase their exposure to cultural capital

The current level of the Pupil Premium funding for 2025/26 academic year is allocated as below: 

• PP (Ever 6) =  £1075

• PP+ (Child Looked After by the local authority or other state care = £2360      

• Child previously looked after by Local Authority = £2630* (paid to local authority)

• Service premium per pupil ( parent serving in the armed forces or has in the last 6 years or a parent has died in service of armed forces) = £350.

• The total amount to be received for this academic year 2024/25 is £154,880

We believe that all our students should have equality of opportunity to excel in our school and succeed in life beyond. It is a fact that 48% of privately educated students gain a place at a highly selective university, while only 2% of students eligible for free school meals do the same. Perhaps most concerning of all, just 29% of disadvantaged students choose to study A Levels after they have completed their GCSEs (The Royal Liberty School destination data shows that more than double this rate of our disadvantaged students are now doing A levels and a further fifth are doing level 3 qualifications). 

Our approach to helping disadvantaged students seeks to address potential barriers for such students such as: lower levels of literacy and numeracy, poor attendance, low self esteem, underdeveloped social skills, deprivation of cultural experiences, poor organisation skills and low aspirations. 

Through our use of the Pupil Premium funding we are fully committed to ensuring that the needs of each student are met so that they can fully achieve their potential. As a result of our approaches, students will make better progress and achieve higher standards than would have been likely without it. Over the last few years the increased provision for disadvantaged students both academically and outside of the classroom has seen these students offered and increasingly taking advantage of many more opportunities. These are monitored by the AHT and as well as their enrichment in terms of developing cultural capital, students’ well being and outcomes are improving too, with attainment increasing and gaps in performance significantly declining and even being eliminated when compared to national boys on several measures (see analysis of spend impact in the Pupil Premium Strategy linked below). 

The performance of disadvantaged students will be published in school figures and details of the use of our Pupil Premium Funding will be published on our website with an evaluation of their impact by December 31st each year in our Pupil Premium Strategy.

  Responsibility 

Although all employed by the school have a duty to work hard to ensure that students eligible for the pupil premium achieve and succeed, the overall responsibility for the Pupil Premium belongs to the Assistant Headteacher for Personal Development and Cultural Capital.

The Assistant Headteacher  will identify the key barriers to achievement and specific needs of our pupil premium students as well as updating the strategic plans for the use of the pupil premium funding. The Pupil Premium lead will ensure that the allocated funding is used in such a way that it has a real impact on the outcomes and life chances of disadvantaged students. The Local Governing Committee Link for disadvantaged students meets at least termly with the Assistant Headteacher  responsible. Any changes made to the strategic plan (when under review annually) are discussed with the rest of the Senior Leadership Team and then presented to the Local Committee. As part of these meetings we will review and evaluate the impact of overall Pupil Premium spending as well as that of individual subject strategies and impacts of the strategies employed are presented to the full governing body too.