What is the Service Pupil Premium?
The Department of Education introduced the Service Pupil Premium in April 2011. The addition of the SPP aimed to support the specific needs and challenges of children living in service families.
State schools, academies, and free schools in England are eligible for SPP funding. SPP helps schools provide additional support to service children who need it. The current SPP allowance is set at £340 per child.
Eligibility criteria
Pupils who are eligible for SPP must meet the following requirements.
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One pupil's parents must serve in the regular armed forces. This also includes pupils with a parent on total commitment as part of their full-time reserve service.
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They have been registered as a "service child" on a school census in the past six years.
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One of the parents has passed away while serving in the armed forces, and the pupil receives a pension from either the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the War Pensions Scheme.
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One of the student's parents is serving in another country's military and is currently based in England.
The Department of Education decided to extend this premium. This means anyone between reception and year 11 who has been flagged as a service child for the last six years will continue to receive the premium.
Ex-service personnel should inform the school if they have left the armed forces within the last six years. According to the Department of Education's new measure, schools will continue to receive the SPP payments for up to 6 years for children whose parents have left the armed forces, provided that the children were recorded as service children in a school census before their parents left the forces. This measure also applies when service parents divorce or separate or when a service parent dies in service.
The purpose of SSP is that eligible schools receive service pupil premium so the school can offer the pupils additional support that is dedicated to their needs and to help mitigate the negative effect of a family member working in the armed forces on young children. The SPP aims to support children in 3 main areas
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Family mobility: When a service person is posted from one location to another, including overseas and within the UK, resulting in separation from their family or the moving of the family home.
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Separation: When a service person is assigned to an unaccompanied location, or the family chooses to remain at home when the service person is deployed, resulting in their weekly/monthly commute home and extended periods away.
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Parental deployment: When a service person is away from home for a period. This could be a 6—to 9-month tour of duty, a training course, or a few-week exercise.
What is the Service Pupil Premium used for?
The SPP is designed to support Children in various ways. Schools are flexible about how they use their SPP funding. This is because they have the best tools to understand the service child's specific situation.
The funding could be spent on the following.
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support, including counselling.
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clubs, e.g. 'Skype time,' to help improve means of communication between the child and their deployed parent(s)
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helping children to develop scrapbooks and diaries, highlighting their achievements and daily school life.
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nurture groups.
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After-school activities that support the specific needs of armed forces children, e.g. resilience-building out-of-hours childcare for service children, which the Wraparound Childcare Scheme supports.
It's important to remember that schools are also held accountable for their spending through their Ofsted inspections. SPP should not be used to subsidise routine school acticity, e.g. Trips, music lessons etc. however, schools may use the funding to fund school trips just for serivce children.
How to get funding
As we mentioned one the ways of receiving the service pupil premium is to ensure that all service children are entered into the upcoming Autumn census. To ensure that funding for your service children is received and your can support your pupils through the Service Pupil premium we highly recommend you complete you include them in your autumn census.
Contact us.
If your unsure on your position with the service pupil premium or want to speak to someone about the variety of ways this funding can support pupils in need. Contact Moore (South) today. Our specialist academies team can run through your options on how to use this funding and help you understand of your eligible to claim the service pupil premium.