Ensuring your website is compliant is one of the top priorities for your school website. We work on hundreds of school websites, and one of the areas we commonly see incomplete is around the Ofsted pupil premium school website requirements. A pupil premium policy is a good thing to have, but it doesn't usually give a detailed insight into your pupil premium that is required. Make sure you publish a pupil premium report that covers the strategy for your pupil premium. The requirements for the content of this report are split into the current year and the previous year.
Getting this right is a crucial part of your School Website Requirements.
Recent Pupil Premium School Website Guidance
In light of the disruptions caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the DfE issued some additional guidance for the pupil premium school website requirements.
"We understand that evaluating the pupil premium’s impact in the 2019 to 2020 academic year will present difficulties as a result of reduced numbers of pupils having attended between March and July 2020.
Instead, schools may wish to monitor and report on the grant’s impact at the end of the current financial year, bearing in mind their duty to update this information at least annually, covering the whole period since September 2019."
The suggestion is that you may choose, and find it easier, to use the funding over a three year period. But as the note above states, you must still update the plan annually in order to be considered compliant. The most logical time to publish this update is at the end of the autumn term.
It is also likely that the way you have spent your funding over the past two years has been very different - make sure you take the opportunity to share the innovative ways you have met the needs of your school community during those years.
How to Display your Pupil Premium Information
As mentioned above, the requirements for pupil premium can be split in two. What you did do with last years funding and what you are doing with this year's funding. Let's break that down a little:
Previous Year
A large part of the pupil premium school website requirements for the previous academic year is concerned with analysis and reporting. The report for the previous year should be indicative of how successfully the school used the pupil premium funding. It needs to be more than just keeping last year's content on the school website. Report and analyse the impact of your pupil premium spending. In addition, your previous report should include details of how the effectiveness of spending will be measured.
By determining the data you will require to measure the effectiveness of your spending you can make your reporting simpler. Determine effective spending measurements by completing the requirements for the current year. Then ensure the data is collected from the start of the year, and it will all be available when it comes time to report. You could include more than just exam results. There is an excellent opportunity in your pupil premium report to show the innovative ways you have addressed the needs of your pupils and reflect on how this directly impacted the targeted pupils.
Current Year
Most of these requirements are focused on the strategic plan for how the pupil premium funding will be spent. The report should include details of the barriers facing students who attract the premium in your school, and why the funding will help overcome these barriers. We often see schools fall down on this particular point. They have provided details of how the funding is spent. However, it does not explain how it was used to address the needs specific to your pupil premium students. Without listing the barriers it is hard to see why the funding was allocated in the way you have reported.
Determine the measurements for effective spending, and include these within your report. After they have been determined to ensure the relevant information is captured throughout the year. Then when it comes time to report, the data is already available. Additionally, your pupil premium report should include the review date for your strategy.
For full details of the pupil premium school website requirements, you can sign up for our School Website Compliance Software to help you check and manage your website. If you already have a Schudio website this tool is available for you to use right within the Compliance section of the dashboard.
The Best Pupil Premium School Website pages
As always with statutory pages of content, try to include more than just the statutory information. Include introductory text content on the page about how your school is working to improve standards and attitudes in line with your ethos and values. Your report may have something like this included in the introduction, but put some intro text on the actual page. Especially this year as it may be helpful to explain to your audience how your content this year differs from previous years.
Pupil Premium Page Checklist
- Ensure you are creating and using a pupil premium report, not just a pupil premium policy.
- Publish a pupil premium report that includes reporting and analysis of spending and the effectiveness of that spending. Especially in relation to previously determined objectives.
- Outline the review dates for your pupil premium strategy, and adhere to the review dates scheduled.
- Update pupil premium information on your website within the timeframe required.
- Write some welcome text on your pupil premium school website page, probably before the report.
- Embed the pupil premium report in an easy to use way, with clear actions to engage with it.
- Insert at least one image on the pupil premium page.
Some additional resources that may be useful as you prepare pupil premium school website reports are available below.
