Pupil Premium
St Mary’s Primary School is a vibrant, welcoming community where children thrive and staff are valued. Our dedicated and enthusiastic team works tirelessly to provide the very best education for every pupil. With a highly experienced and well-established senior leadership team, we foster a culture of high expectations and ensure that our pupils remain at the heart of everything we do.
We are a thriving town centre primary school with a Christian ethos and a family atmosphere. Our values are the Christian values of Friendship, Respect, Perseverance, Courage, Compassion and Thankfulness and these are embedded in everything that we do.
At St. Mary’s Church of England Primary School, we aim to make a difference to the life of every child. We believe that every child should have a dream; that the dream should be believed in and that every child can achieve what they set out to do. We champion every child and aim to inspire all members of our learning community to aim for excellence. Learning is a lifelong journey of discovery and it is our duty as educators to ignite curiosity, excitement and resilience so that our children can see themselves as lifelong learners.
Our intention is that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the challenges they face, make increasingly good progress year on year and achieve high attainment across all subject areas. It is important to us that each child at St Mary’s Primary School is seen as an individual, unique learner who can make good progress, achieve high attainment, and develop emotionally, mentally, socially, and academically.
The focus of our pupil premium strategy is to support disadvantaged pupils to achieve that goal, including progress for those who are already high attainers. For the purpose of achieving our vision, we aim to ensure that pupil premium students participate in the wider curriculum to the same extent as their peers, whilst addressing and removing any challenges faced by disadvantaged students.
The focus of this pupil premium strategy is to support all disadvantaged students, regardless of prior attainment, in achieving their full potential and becoming aspirational individuals. The initiatives we hope to achieve will enable children to build the skills needed to succeed as they transition to secondary school and beyond.
This strategy acknowledges the complex challenges faced by disadvantaged pupils and vulnerable children in Hinckley and its surrounding areas, including those with a social worker, young carers, looked-after children and families on early help or pre-early help pathways. No single intervention can address these challenges so we believe a multi-faceted approach provides the best opportunity for our children to succeed.
Quality first teaching, as outlined in the EEF Guide to Pupil Premium, is central to our strategy. This approach promotes high expectations for teaching and learning, strengthens teachers' subject knowledge and provides pupils with the best opportunities in every subject. Evidence shows that high-quality teaching has the greatest impact on closing the attainment gap between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils while improving outcomes for all learners.
In addition to high-quality teaching, we recognise the need for targeted support outside the classroom. This includes addressing social, emotional, and mental health needs and providing focused academic interventions to enable children to succeed within the classroom. Common challenges to learning for disadvantaged children, can be less support at home, less well-developed language and communication skills, lack of confidence, more frequent behaviour difficulties and attendance and punctuality issues. There may also be complex family situations that prevent children from flourishing. The challenges are varied and there is no “one size fits all”.
Our approach has been carefully considered by strategic leaders, the Pupil Premium lead and the school business manager. It is informed by individual family circumstances, academic achievement data and teacher assessments. The strategy is flexible and will be adapted throughout the year to meet the evolving needs of our community.