What Matters to Parents…

Pupil Equity Funding Consultation

Below is information about the Pupil Equity Fund (PEF) from Parentzone Scotland

Pupil Equity Funding

Pupil Equity Funding is money that will go to your child’s school to help them provide the best possible opportunities for children’s learning. In particular, it is there to help the school support children who experience barriers to learning and who might be falling behind or not getting the same chances in their education because their family is experiencing poverty or other financial difficulties. This money is given to schools as part of the Scottish Government’s Scottish Attainment Challenge.

Who is the Pupil Equity Funding for?

Pupil Equity Funding is designed to support children in Primary 1 to S3 who are eligible and registered for free school meals.  Headteachers can also use their judgement to support other children in their school who are affected by poverty.

What difference will it make to my child?

Your child’s Headteacher will have additional resources that they can use to help children achieve their potential at school.

More information on:

Context of Bellshill Academy

Bellshill Academy is a diverse community made up of pupils from a range of backgrounds.

Around 21% of our pupils are entitled to free school meals. This number is highest for pupils S1 to S3. 46% of our pupils across all year groups live in deciles 1 and 2. A further 29% live in deciles 3 and 4. Our PEF is determined by these statistics.

The grant is link to free school meal UPTAKE. If your child is entitled to Free School Meals but has not yet registered please do not hesitate to contact the Head of Year or Head Teacher. Doing so will increase the sums of money awarded to the school.

Our Plan 2021-2022

This Year’s Funding: £91890

PEF Rationale

Through PEF, Bellshill Academy aims to work with parents and the community to enhance the life chances of our pupils. We understand that the barriers are often Literacy and Numeracy based. There have been improvements in these areas through PEF ,however further work is needed to ensure that the appropriate interventions are in place at the appropriate times, including involvement with our Cluster Primary schools.

We also understand the role of health and wellbeing for our pupils. We need to ensure that are healthy, safe and respected and have in place help for those that need it. This is especially important this year as we recover form Covid-19. A stronger community helping pupils outside of school will give all pupils a better chance of securing rewarding futures. Although this is difficult at this time due to restrictions, it is important that we innovate in this area.

PEF Spend Focus Areas

Staffing

We are currently employing the following:

1 Depute Head Teacher (DHT)

5 Principal Teachers (PT)

3.2 Teaching Staff

Promoted staff are leading on the following areas:

Nurture

We are involved in a nurture pilot for North Lanarkshire Council. We aim to improve the wellbeing of our pupils through having a nurturing approach to how our school works. We have nurture groups to work more intensively with some pupils to help them get the best out of their school career.

Outdoor learning and Attendance

The school wants to improve the wellbeing of pupils and grow confidence, self esteem and our pupils abilities to contribute to the wider school. We have groups improving their cycling proficiency through Bikeability, pupils engaged with the John Muir Award and we have a committee looking at who we can become an Eco School.

STEM

Science, Technology, Engineering and Maths are being taken forward in the school to improve our attainment in all of these areas. This year we are integrating Crest awards into our Science course, we have a group of pupils being Science Ambassadors and are running the Brilliant Club again. The school has had great success with the Brilliant Club over the past few years, where some of our S3 pupils link with a PHD tutor to research a topic and present their findings. Last year 2 pupils were highly commended nationally for their work. We are also about to role out a numeracy booklet, which will help pupils understand the different ways numeracy is used across the full school curriculum.

Digital Family Engagement

We want to ensure we continue to engage as well as possible with our school community as we continue to have Covid restrictions in place. We are active on social media (Links to Twitter and to Facebook) continue to use Microsoft Teams through Glow to give homework, give information and keep on track with pupils working from home. We have also started a Parent Forum which aims to involve more parents involved in helping us improve our school. For more information on the Parent Forum please email the school or message us on Facebook or Twitter.

Learning Recovery

The school is taking a cluster approach to how we try to ensure we recover from the previous lockdowns. We are looking at the progression that all our pupils have from primary into secondary all the way to how well the attain in their exams. We are working on more Transition events for pupils, getting them to work more regularly with a range of staff in Bellshill Academy so that their move from Primary into Secondary is as good as possible. We are looking to improve how well we know the pupils when they arrive as well, working with Primary colleagues in standardising our assessments across the cluster. We are also working with some of our more senior pupils to help them attain the very best awards in their exams through coaching and mentoring.

3.2 Teaching Staff

Unpromoted staff are being used to help with the initiatives mentioned, are helping ensure that any absences due to Covid are able to be managed and are also taking forward plans to improve both our positive behaviour policy and also improve our House identity in S1-3. House events will be being organised throughout the year.

Counselling

North Lanarkshire Council already provides funding to the cluster for counselling. If needed we will be able to allocate further funds from PEF/SAC to ensure that our pupils get access to a counselling service, which will give them the support needed to achieve their best.

ICT Equipment

Laptops and Interactive Promethean boards have been purchased. These allow staff to be more innovative in their teaching and allow them to have the resources needed to ensure progression for all pupils. These resources will have a real impact on pupils throughout the school and allow the school to stay as up to date as possible with the technology we can use.

Consultation

We welcome your thoughts and opinions on our plans for this session and would like you to take part in a short survey which can be found here:

Consultation

We welcome all feedback and thank you for taking the time to take part in the consultation.