Policies, Procedures & Statutory Documentation

This statement details our school’s use of pupil premium (and recovery premium for the 2023 to 2024 academic year) funding to help improve the attainment of our disadvantaged pupils.

It outlines our pupil premium strategy, how we intend to spend the funding in this academic year and the effect that last year’s spending of pupil premium had within our school.

School overview

Detail	Data
School name	Horsforth School
Number of pupils in school	1338 (1660 inc. KS5)
Proportion (%) of pupil premium eligible pupils	14.58% (195 pupils)
Academic year/years that our current pupil premium strategy plan covers	2023-24
Date this statement was published	12/12/23
Date on which it will be reviewed	01/09/2024
Statement authorised by	P. Bell
Pupil premium lead	B. Wilson
Governor / Trustee lead	H. Shearer

Funding overview

Detail	Amount
Pupil premium funding allocation this academic year	£195,615.00
Recovery premium funding allocation this academic year	£54,924
NTP Funding	£30,459
Total budget for this academic year If your school is an academy in a trust that pools this funding, state the amount available to your school this academic year	£280,998.00

Statement of intent

Horsforth School firmly believes in Opportunity and Achievement for all. This transcends across all our students, inclusive of their age, social background or any other characteristic. Pupil Premium progress, both academically and pastorally is a whole school priority for Horsforth School. No student should be disadvantaged in their pursuit of reaching their full potential and Horsforth school is committed to closing the achievement gap between those who access the Pupil Premium and those who do not.

In each year, Horsforth School offer targeted intervention to close the gap, including those who are high attainers. Research from the EEF suggests the gap widens with age; by implementing evidenced-informed strategies from year 7, we hope to mitigate this. By using the funds this way, Horsforth School will increase pupils’ confidence and resilience, encourage pupils to be more aspirational and benefit all students, including non-eligible pupils.

High-quality teaching is at the heart of our approach, with a focus on areas in which disadvantaged pupils require the most support. This is proven to have the greatest impact on closing the disadvantage attainment gap and at the same time will benefit the non-disadvantaged pupils in our school. Our approach is proactive in response to common challenges and individual needs:

• To ensure disadvantaged pupils are challenged in the work that they’re set
• To act early to intervene at the point need is identified
• To adopt a whole school approach in which all staff take responsibility for disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes and raise expectations of what they can achieve

The key principles behind our strategy are based on the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) who suggest that pupil premium spending is most effective when schools use a tiered approach, targeting spending across the following 3 areas below but explicitly focusing on teaching quality, investing in learning and development for teachers:

1.) Teaching -Schools arrange training and professional development for all staff to improve the impact of teaching and learning for pupils.

2.) Academic support -Schools should decide on the main issues stopping their pupils from succeeding at school and use the pupil premium to invest in extra help.

3.) Wider approaches – This may include non-academic activities such as music lessons for disadvantaged pupils; help with the cost of educational trips or visits; involvement in wider school responsibilities such as School Parliament.

Challenges this Academic Year 2023-24

This details the key challenges to achievement that we have identified among our disadvantaged pupils.

Challenge number	Detail of challenge
1	Achievement gap exists between student P8 outcomes of Pupil Premium (-.0.07) and Non-PP students (+0.75). The gap for 2022-23 was -0.82.
2	Ensuring that students are fully equipped and prepared for next steps by addressing learning gaps caused by disrupted learning due to COVID years.
3	Despite both PP and Non-PP figures being above national average, the gap in attendance figures for PP and non-PP students has increased from 6.49% to 8.3%.
4	The reading, and communication skills highlighted in SATs and internal reading data between Pupil Premium and Non-Pupil Premium students. This creates a barrier to learning and success.
5	A reduced awareness and experience of Cultural Capital which can lower aspiration and the potential for students to reach the highest grades within subjects.

 

Intended Outcomes this Academic Year 2023-24

This explains the outcomes we are aiming for by the end of our current strategy plan, and how we will measure whether they have been achieved.

	Intended outcome	Success criteria
1	Progress of zero or better for year 11 Pupil Premium students.	GCSE results
2	100% of students leave Horsforth and into further education, employment or training – PP 0% 2021, 1.5% 2022, 0% 2023.	Destination data Careers provision
3	Pupil Premium Attendance above the national average for Pupil Premium students.	Attendance tracking and interventions: Attendance data electronically stored through SIMs operating system
4	High quality curriculum and successful implementation of whole school literacy strategy.	QA and evidence informed CPD Progress review Deep dives Reading data Staff voice Student voice
5	Increased Cultural Capital among Pupil Premium students with exceptional personal development opportunities.	Monitoring of the range of trips/visits/extracurricular SIMs activities data Student voice

 

Activity in this academic year

This details how we intend to spend our pupil premium (and recovery premium funding) this academic year to address the challenges listed above.

Teaching (for example, CPD, recruitment and retention)

Budgeted cost: £125,000.00

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
Curriculum offer – The curriculum is ambitious and is designed to give all students including, disadvantaged pupils the knowledge and cultural capital they need to succeed in life.	The Education Endowment Foundation and Department for Education State a schools’ curriculum should be coherently planned and sequenced towards cumulatively sufficient knowledge in order to maximise progress.	1, 2, 3, 4, 5
Purchase of standardised diagnostic assessments: Literacy Assessment Online. Training will be provided for staff to ensure assessments are interpreted correctly.	EEF research validates that standardised tests can provide reliable insights into the specific strengths and weaknesses of each pupil to help ensure they receive the correct additional support through interventions or teacher instruction.	1, 2, 4, 5
Developing metacognitive and self-regulation skills in all pupils.   Training will be provided for staff to ensure strategies are implemented and QA will be used to identify practice to develop and best practice.	EEF findings demonstrates that teaching metacognitive strategies to pupils can be an inexpensive method to help pupils become more independent learners. There is particularly strong evidence that it can have a positive impact on maths attainment.	1, 2, 4
Improving literacy in all subject areas in line with recommendations in the EEF Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools guidance.	Developing the skills of reading to learn and acquiring disciplinary literacy is key for students as they learn new, more complex concepts in each subject. Reading comprehension, vocabulary and other literacy skills are heavily linked with attainment in maths and English.	1, 2, 4
Whole school focus on enhancing the teaching and learning of assessment and feedback.	Education Endowment Foundation research asserts that investing in enhancing the impact of feedback is a very high impact for very low cost based on extensive evidence – six months impact.   Effects are high across all curriculum subjects, with slightly higher effects in mathematics and science. There is evidence to suggest that feedback involving metacognitive and self-regulatory approaches can have a greater impact on disadvantaged pupils and lower prior attainers than other pupils.	1, 2, 4
Embedding Retrieval Practice linked to AFL.	The Education Endowment Foundation; The Learning Scientist; Rosenshine’s Principles in Action: Tom Sherrington: all show that retrieval is critical for robust, durable, long-term learning. Every time a memory is retrieved, that memory becomes more accessible in the future. Retrieval also helps us create coherent and integrated mental representations of complex concepts, the kind of deep learning necessary to solve new problems and draw new inferences. (Durrington Research School).	1, 2, 4
Literacy Across the Curriculum: Learning to Read, Reading to Learn, Disciplinary Literacy, and Reading for Pleasure.	EEF: Improving Literacy in Secondary Schools (Guidance Report, July 2018) EEF: Improving Literacy in Key Stage 2 (Guidance Report, Nov 2021) The Education Endowment Foundation; Closing the Reading Gap and Mastering the Fundamentals of Reading and Writing – Alex Quigley: It is important to identify the appropriate level of text difficulty, to provide appropriate context to practice the skills, desire to engage with the text and enough challenge to improve reading comprehension.	1, 2, 4, 5
Associate AHT to collaborate with partner schools as part of the ELE Project and implement PP strategy under the guidance of a mentor.	The Education Endowment Foundation; School leaders should aim to develop an in-depth understanding of any challenges that disadvantaged pupils are facing.	1, 2, 4
Year 7 transition groups make incremental progress through summative assessments, increasing in performance reflected in their attainment percentage.	The Education Endowment Foundation: The best available evidence indicates that great teaching is the most important lever schools have to improve pupil attainment. We know that transitions between classes, year groups and settings are likely to be of significant importance in the lead up to the new academic year.	1, 2, 4
Specific whole school CPD focused on learning through the lens of SEND students to support with SEMH, literacy skills and support planning for students’ needs.	The Education Endowment Foundation SEND in Mainstream Schools summary of recommendations (environment, understanding, teaching, interventions, TAs) has been built into the CPD provided for staff.	1, 2, 4

 

Targeted academic support (for example, tutoring, one-to-one support structured interventions)

Budgeted cost: £75,000.00

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
Early diagnostic testing of students in KS3 with targeted interventions implemented for key priority students. Students are provided with bespoke small group and/or one to one support to close gaps in reading and support with accessing the curriculum.	Reading comprehension strategies can have a positive impact on pupils’ ability to understand a text, and this is particularly the case when interventions are delivered over a shorter time span.	1, 2, 4
Adopting a targeted reciprocal teaching programme as a reading intervention for disadvantaged pupils who need additional help to comprehend texts and address vocabulary gaps.	Reading comprehension strategies can have a positive impact on pupils’ ability to understand a text, and this is particularly the case when interventions are delivered over a shorter time span.	1, 2, 4, 5
Implementing a carefully researched and targeted phonics programme to support the weakest readers to access the curriculum.	The Education Endowment Foundation: Phonics is a high impact for low cost intervention. The teaching of phonics should be explicit and systematic and matched to children’s current level of skill in terms of their phonemic awareness and their knowledge of letter sounds and patterns (graphemes).	1, 2, 3, 4
PP Mentoring scheme years 7, 8 (year 12 mentors) and 11 (teachers and leadership team)   Year 7 and 8 – Year 12, student ambassadors of English and maths support students each week during a tutor time overseen by TLR holders from the English and maths department.	The Education Endowment Foundation: Peer tutoring approaches have been shown to have a positive impact on learning, with an average positive effect equivalent to approximately five additional months’ progress within one academic year. Studies have identified benefits for both tutors and tutees, and for a wide range of age groups. Though all types of pupils appear to benefit from peer tutoring, there is some evidence that pupils who are low-attaining and those with special educational needs make the biggest gains.   Use of the new EEF guide, ‘Making a difference with effective tutoring’ to support successful implementation of tutoring at Horsforth School.	1, 2, 4, 5
Year 11 – Departmental intervention in each subject, available by invite (targeted at underachieving PP students) or drop-in, and is led by subject specialists. Targeted English, maths and science intervention takes place for two hours a week as part of extended core subject curriculum time for all students and is led by subject specialists.	The Education Endowment Foundation – Extending School Time: Before and after school programmes with a clear structure, a strong link to the curriculum, and well-qualified and well-trained staff are more clearly linked to academic benefits than other types of extended hours provision.	1, 2, 5
Free revision guides for all GCSE PP students.	Supported by above evidence and the impact of academic intervention.	1, 2, 4, 5

  

Wider strategies (for example, related to attendance, behaviour, wellbeing)

Budgeted cost: £75,000.00

Activity	Evidence that supports this approach	Challenge number(s) addressed
Attendance: Pastoral team to support attendance 5-week cycle – targeting and supporting Pupil Premium students whose attendance falls below the minimum threshold of 96%	The Education Endowment Foundation and the Department for Education: The higher the overall absence rate across Key Stage (KS) 2 and KS4, the lower the likely level of attainment at the end of KS2 and KS4.	1, 2, 3
PP Attendance tracker through SIMs. The Pastoral team intervene daily with any unauthorised attendances.	The Education Endowment Foundation and the Department for Education: The higher the overall absence rate across Key Stage (KS) 2 and KS4, the lower the likely level of attainment at the end of KS2 and KS4.	1, 2, 3
Pastoral Officer: Pastoral appointment who supports and diagnoses need for students including forming a strong relationship with home. All ITTs and PBOs receive specific CPD on understanding the school strategy for best supporting PP students.	The Education Endowment Foundation: On average, individualised instruction (singular targeted approach to support students) approaches have an impact of 4 months’ additional progress. The average impact of the Parental engagement approaches is about an additional four months’ progress over the course of a year. There are also higher impacts for pupils with low prior attainment.	1, 2, 3, 4
Super Curriculum opportunities including: extra-curricular clubs ranging from sports to robots to cooking; interventions across subjects from years 7-13, and Character Education.	EEF: Additional non-academic activities may also provide free or low-cost alternatives to sport, music, and other enrichment activities that more advantaged families are more likely to be able to pay for outside of school.	1, 4, 5
Cultural Capital opportunities promoted through educational opportunities and personal development: theatre trips, external speakers etc…	The Sutton Trust: Improving aspiration is widely linked to academic improvements and wellbeing. This can support societies with social mobility.	1, 5
Super Curriculum and Cultural Capital: School Parliament relaunch with external speaker delivering assemblies to all and identified students with specific recruitment of PP students as representatives in each year group.	The Sutton Trust: Improving aspiration is widely linked to academic improvements and wellbeing. This can support societies with social mobility.	1, 2, 4, 5
PP students receive essential equipment for free including scientific and specialist equipment upon request.	Key equipment to support learners to access the curriculum.	1, 4, 5
Link and Connect Provision: Pastoral, wrap around care for the most vulnerable PP & SEND students and focusses on re-engaging school refusers and students who are PA; raising achievement and addressing progress gaps across the curriculum through timetabled intervention.	The Education Endowment Foundation: ‘Social and emotional skills’ are essential for children’s development— they support effective learning and are linked to positive outcomes in later life. With the right support, children learn to articulate and manage their emotions, deal with conflict, solve problems, understand things from another person’s perspective, and communicate in appropriate ways.	1, 2, 4, 5

 

Total budgeted cost: £275,000.00

Pupil premium strategy outcomes

This details the impact that our pupil premium activity had on pupils in the 2022 to 2023 academic year.

Intended outcome	Success criteria
Progress of zero or better for year 11 Pupil Premium students.	GCSE results: -0.07
Pupil Premium Attendance above the national average for Pupil Premium students.	Attendance data electronically stored through SIMs operating system: 86.7% (+1.1% on national, -1.01% on 2022) Successful targeted mentoring: average increase of 3.51% for selected priority cohort across Y7-11.
100% of students leave Horsforth and into further education, employment or training – PP 0% 2021, 1.5% 2022.	Destination data: 0% NEET.
Whole School Literacy Strategy	Accelerated Reader data for Year 7 and Year 8 students: 81% of students increased their reading age, average increase across all students of 8 months. Teaching and Learning QA: improvements in priority areas, specifically 50% improvement in questioning strand of QA. Staff/student voice: 100% positive feedback on introduction of Reading Curriculum.
Increased Cultural Capital among Pupil Premium students.	All PP students prioritised for trips and funding provided for each year group: Poetry Slam, ACC, Julius Caesar, LOTF, AIC School Parliament: 18.4% of members PP, 62% of wider members PP – leadership, charity involvement, influencing school development, valued input and feedback. External speakers accessed by all PP students: Bart/Greg (Candlelighters Challenge 30 fundraising initiative raising £11,262)

 

Achievement – GCSE Results 3-Year Trend:

	2022/2023			2021/2022			2018/2019
Measure	PP Students	Other Students	Gap	PP Students	Other Students	Gap	PP Students	Other Students	Gap
P8 score	-0.07	+0.75	-0.82	-0.26	0.51	-0.77	-0.28	0.53	-0.81
A8 score	45.48	59.54	-14.06	44.05	56.89	-12.84	39.24	56.96	-17.72

 

 

Attendance:

Group	2022/23	2021/22	2018/2019
All	93.8	93.38	96.1
PP	86.7	87.71	92.8
Non-PP	95.0	94.2	96.8
GAP	-8.3	-6.49	-4.0

 

Publicly-funded schools in England get extra funding from the government to help improve the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. The evidence shows that children from disadvantaged backgrounds generally face extra challenges in reaching their potential and often do not perform as well as their peers. The pupil premium grant is designed to allow schools to help disadvantaged pupils by improving their progress and the exam results they achieve. The Pupil Premium group consists of students who are in receipt of free school meals (FSM), who have been in receipt of free school meals within the last six years (FSM Ever 6), who have been looked after continuously for the past 6 months (LAC) or who have been adopted from care. In addition, the school also receives a separate Service Children’s Premium, which applies to the children of parents or carers who are serving in the Armed Forces. The Service Children’s Premium is intended to support the pastoral needs of Service Children.

For the year 2023/24 the Pupil Premium has a value of £1035 per eligible pupil and £2530 for children classified as LAC/Pupil Premium Plus. The Service Children premium is £335/student. There are currently 195 Pupil Premium Students at Horsforth School. Horsforth School is a comprehensive school with an average cohort of 14.58% of students entitled to the Pupil Premium.

Research from The Education Endowment Foundation has found that disadvantaged pupils have been worst affected by partial school closures, and that the attainment gap has grown as a result of national lockdowns. The economic impact of Covid-19 has also led to higher numbers of pupils qualifying for pupil premium. It is therefore more important than ever that we support students who qualify for the premium. “The attainment gap grows wider at every stage of education: it is already evident when pupils begin school, growing to 9.5 months by the end of primary school, and then more than doubling to 19.3 months by the end of secondary school.” (EEF, 2018). This is why at Horsforth School have an intervention in every year 7-11 for students eligible for the Pupil Premium funding. The school has a clear ethos of ‘Opportunity and Achievement for All’, which we want to foster both academically and pastorally to ensure all students reach their potential. With the return of extra-curricular and super-curricular activities, we want to foster cultural capital opportunities for students to raise aspirations and possibilities – by doing this, coupled with high quality teaching and learning the GAP which exists nationally, will be mitigated at Horsforth School.

The summer school ran for two periods of 5 days over the summer holiday – 26th – 30th July and 23rd – 27th August 2021.

All 285 of the new year 7 cohort were invited to attend. 223 students took part for at least one day and the numbers attending were as follows:

 

Date	Number Attended
Monday 26 July	140
Tuesday 27 July	135
Wednesday 28 July	133
Thursday 29 July	130
Friday 30 July	114
Monday 23 August	82
Tuesday 24 August	83
Wednesday 25 August	81
Thursday 26 August	83
Friday 27 August	69
Total	1050

Staffing numbers

The programme was led and developed by 2 members of school SLT.

In the first week, there were 5 members of teaching staff and 4 support staff. In the second week there were 4 members of teaching staff and 3 support staff. An additional member of staff from Horsforth Children’s Services attended each day of both weeks to sign the young people in and out, deal with queries from young people and parents/carers, organise the distribution of lunches and oversee the rooming/timetabling of the groups.

Preparation for the Summer school

In school staff attended several planning meetings lead by the leadership team. Plans were devised for providing a fun summer school with the added benefit of encouraging new peer relationships, time to integrate into their new school surroundings and meet key adults; something they had been unable to do earlier due to COVID restrictions, and give opportunities for literacy and numeracy catch up whilst a accessing a cross curricular programme accessible for all.

School staff worked in conjunction with the staff from Horsforth Childrens’ services to provide a programme of events, well resourced and planned, to support a successful year 6 o 7 transition for our pupils.

Prior to the start of the summer school, information was sent out to families explaining that although the summer school was a fun, voluntary activity, part of the purpose of the week was to get the young people ready for school and therefore we would be expecting them to follow school rules and procedures.

We worked with our partner primaries to ensure our most vulnerable families were targeted specifically and students encouraged to attend.

How the summer school worked

The day was designed to look very similar to a typical day in school with five periods in order to prepare students for this format in September. Students were randomly assigned into groups for Monday to Wednesday and then re-assigned randomly into new groups for the Thursday and Friday. This was to encourage the students to meet new people and form new friendships but also to minimise mixing and support our COVID risk assessment.

A carousel of activities was offered for the first four periods each day with the groups moving between classrooms to gain familiarity with the building. The first activities every day had a very specific numeracy and/or literacy focus linked to the KS2/3 curriculum. Subsequent activities then linked to various aspects of the curriculum whilst incorporating those maths and English skills needed to access the key stage 3 curriculum. Activities included Orienteering, science based challenges, arts and crafts, rounders, IT sessions, pottery, kite building and were planned and delivered by trained staff from various department areas from within the school.

The final session every day was an organised outdoor physical session where the groups took part in games and team challenges.

A lunch was provided each day and the young people were invited to choose what they would like before the summer school started.

Quotes from young people:

“I would definitely recommend the summer school to year 6 next year”

“I liked the orienteering best, now I know my way around”

“I was very scared at the start but now I am looking forward to starting in September”

Parent voice

“I just wanted to thank you for providing such a fantastic transition week for the children, XXX has thoroughly enjoyed it and is feeling more excited about starting school.”

“We are so grateful for this opportunity for XXX to get to know more of the school, his peers and teachers.”

Additional summer school days

An additional summer school was offered and promoted to those families of existing students in receipt of pupil premium funding.

Students from years 7 to 10 were invited into school over the summer holidays on either the 11th, 13th or 15th August for a tutoring session with a year coordinator, pastoral behaviour officer or leadership team member. The aim of the sessions were multifaceted to be able to support students with their studies but also a wellbeing check-in opportunity. Students, prior to leaving for the summer holidays were issued with a pack of summary work from the academic year that was drawing to a close. This enabled students to be able revisit any of the work they may have missed or wanted to further consolidate. When students visited in the summer, they were encouraged to ask questions or to go over any topics that they may have found challenging. Upon return to school in September, curriculum areas were asked to highlight their learning journeys to students so they can see how previously learnt content contributes to the next phase of teaching.

Parent/carers were contacted prior to the summer holidays to arrange appointments for the students to attend. If any student missed the appointment, phone calls home were made instead.

 

Summer Transition  Expenditure Summary
Staffing	£19,599
Catering	£5,850
Resources	£4,401
IT Equipment	£17,265
Premises	£6,210
Total Summer School Expenditure	£53,325