Service Pupils and Families

The Department for Education introduced the Service Pupil Premium (SPP) in April 2011 in recognition of the specific challenges children from Service families face and as part of the commitment to delivering the armed forces covenant.

The Service Pupil Premium has a slightly different purpose to the Disadvantaged Pupil Premium, focusing more on pastoral support than academic progress.  The SPP is an allocation of £300 per service child (Reception to Year 11) who meets the eligibility criteria, which is paid directly to school and not to the individual. It is designed to assist the school in providing additional support that these children and/or their families may need.

Service children are an important and integral part of our school community. We recognise that military life can present a diverse range of opportunities and experiences, but also that it has its challenges; we understand that aspects of service life may be a struggle, at times, for some of our pupils and their families. We aim to ensure that no child is disadvantaged at school in anyway or because of parents’ careers. The support that school provides will vary as every pupil is different and every circumstance they face is unique. We recognise that the provision may not be directly relevant to one particular child at a specific point in time, the pupil may well come to need this in the future.

We very much value our partnership with parents; if you know that something is on the horizon which may affect your children, please let us know.

Service familes can benefit from the government scheme to help to provide childcare for children from military families.

https://www.gov.uk/guidance/childcare-for-service-children

The Service Pupil Premium funding that school receives goes towards addressing a number of identified needs including:

• Armed Forces Champion – this role supports the pastoral needs of service children and their families and is the first point of contact for families new to the area
• Pupil support intervention– to ensure rapid identification of gaps in knowledge, barriers to learning and additional needs. Once established, additional provision and support can be put into place to support learning
• Pupil progress – monitoring of service children’s progress compared to the wider school population to ensure that they learn, develop and achieve their own expected level of progress
• Wellbeing Team– targeted support from the team according to individual need. The team are able to support individuals to build social skills, self-esteem and develop positive attitudes to learning thus raising academic attainment
• Provision of wider curriculum activities – opportunities to participate in different experiences: including, for example, forest school and cook school; these provide nurturing environments to foster children’s self esteem, confidence and emotional well-being
• ‘Hub Time’ – celebrating our inclusivity of our school ethos this is our lunchtime pastoral provision that children are invited to attend
• Training and development – to maintain a positive and professional school climate

For further details on SPP please speak to school.

Our Armed Forces Champion is Mrs Wilson. She can be contacted via afc.rws@ebor.academy

Click here for more information about the Service Families Liaison Officer Support for Military Families Beccy Dixon is the Service Family Liaison Officer

York Armed Forces Information and Directory of Support – click the link for the directory: AFC – York Directory

SERVICE BUDDIES

We recognise that our  service children have specific needs, challenges and strengths with this in mind we are proud to share that our school operates a system of Service Buddies

Our service children  told us that starting a new school can be daunting for them as they sometimes don’t even have a chance to visit before their first day. Our Service Buddies aim to make this an easier transition by:

• having meetings just for service pupils in school
• being a point of contact and a buddy to new and existing service children
• being part of new service children’s visit to our school
• writing a welcome letter to new children so they come to school already having a friendly face and someone to talk to who understands what life as a service child is like.