In The Stour Federation our vision is to develop confident and creative children who flourish in a changing world. We ensure this is the case by providing a broad and ambitious curriculum for all, with an emphasis on targeted support, where needed, to stop a pupil’s circumstances affecting their academic progress and therefore life chances.

Our priority is to implement our vision through highly effective classroom teaching supplemented by interventions to support vulnerable learners. In planning our Pupil Premium Strategy, we have drawn on a range of experience, evidence-based research and best practice from across the Trust and the Education Endowment Foundation’s Teaching and Learning Toolkit which found that the most important factor in improving narrowing the disadvantage gap is effective teaching day after day. High quality Teaching and Learning is therefore the most effective strategy in narrowing this gap but our schools’ plans also detail a range of out of lesson interventions to support pupils further. The causes and consequences of disadvantage affect all pupils differently and as such our interventions are bespoke and targeted depending on school, phase and context. All leaders in each school, including the Governors, are committed to ensuring the Pupil Premium funding is targeted to provide the best possible outcomes to pupils that may be at a disadvantage. 

The Trust uses the EEF tiered approach. EEF’s pupil premium guide:

1. High Quality Teaching
2. Targeted Academic Support
3. Wider Strategies relating to significant non-academic barriers including attendance, behaviour and Social and Emotional Learning/support.

The tiered approach is managed by individual schools.  All data is always broken down to include sub-groups of Pupil Premium.  All Trust schools are driven by a moral imperative to improve outcomes and experiences for learners from disadvantaged backgrounds and all schools understand the tiered approach and agreed focus areas within each tier .  

All schools have a detailed Pupil Premium Implementation Plan.  These implementation plans are supported by the EEF implementation documentation template to aid discussion and all plans link into our Trust drivers and wildly important goals.