The Pupil Premium is a Government initiative providing additional funding to publicly funded schools in England to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and close the gap between them and their peers. These include pupils who are entitled to Free School Meals and those looked after by the Local Authority. The premium is provided in order to support these pupils in reaching their potential.

The Government are not dictating how schools should spend this money, but are clear that schools will need to employ the strategies that they know will support their pupils to increase their attainment and ‘close the gap’. Schools will be accountable for closing the gap and outcomes will be published in the school’s performance tables that show the attainment of pupils who receive the pupil premium compared with their peers. They will be called disadvantaged pupils in data published after September 2014.