Guidance

Service Pupil Premium: examples of best practice

Updated 29 August 2024

Applies to England

• Publication for Scotland
• Publication for Wales

Below is a selection of ways that primary and secondary schools have used the available SPP funding to support service children, with the shared goal of providing additional pastoral support to service families.

If you would like the information below emailed to you as a PDF, please contact Armed Forces Families & Safeguarding (AFFS) at [email protected].

Joyce Frankland Academy

• School profile: secondary
• Age range of pupils: 11 to 18

Contact: Tessa Pierre

Service Children Liaison Officer
Joyce Frankland Academy
Water Lane
Newport, Saffron Walden
Essex
CB11 3TR

Joyce Frankland Academy, Newport, is a village comprehensive that was originally founded as a grammar school in 1588. It has an intake of 900 pupils from a range of areas with the majority arriving from small rural primary schools across a 25-mile radius. On average, 5% of pupils are from service families based at the local barracks.

In 2013 SPP was used to employ a member of pastoral staff known as the ‘Service Children Liaison Officer’. This position involves working pastorally with service pupils, including:

• regular visits to the feeder primary schools throughout the year, especially during Year 6 transition time
• building strong relationships with pupils before they start at the academy in Year 7
• being the main point of contact for service families on a daily basis, at parents’ evenings and at other academy events
• building strong links with the local barracks through monthly meetings with battalion welfare officers
• guiding families in applying for mid-year admissions
• attending deployment briefings and the Service Children in State Schools (SCISS) Conference
• representing the academy at barracks events
• submitting applications to the MOD Education Support Fund

This role has enabled a deeper understanding of the needs of service children allowing for their full integration into the academy’s community. This was acknowledged in the academy’s recent Ofsted report, which said:

The school provides exceptional support for pupils of families in the armed services. As a result, these pupils are thriving.

With the SPP, the academy is also able to provide:

• support with transport to and from barracks with no public transport access
• extra-curricular sporting activities
• revision guides
• study skills support
• mural and other recreational activities

St Michael’s Primary and Nursery School

• School profile: primary and nursery
• Age range of pupils: 3 to 11

Contact: Gail Morgan

St Michael’s Primary School & Nursery
Camulodunum Way
Colchester
Essex
CO2 9RA

St Michael’s Primary School and Nursery is situated near the Merville Barracks in Colchester, Essex, with 17% of pupils coming from service families.

The school frequently reviews how to spend the SPP to most benefit the children socially and academically.

Service children may attend many schools, so it is essential that the children and their families feel part of the school community soon after arriving.This belief led to the creation of the Pastoral Team, which has been running successfully for several years. The team consists of an Inclusion Leader, a Family Liaison Officer and several members of support staff who lead Wellbeing Hubs. The team also hosts induction meetings with all parents when children join the school, identifying children and/or families that may require additional support from the outset.

The support provided is bespoke to each individual child and family member, and includes:

• academic support - provided in the form of precision teaching sessions with a member of the team where gaps in learning are identified
• speech and language support - provided by an Elklan-trained learning mentor; the school will soon be an ‘Elklan Communication Friendly Setting school’
• social and emotional support - available to both parents and children by a trained Family Liaison Officer

The school is proud of educating and supporting service children so that they have access to the same opportunities as their non-service peers, which can be seen in end-of-year results.

Wolvey C of E Primary school

• School profile: primary
• Age range of pupils: 4 to 11

Contact: Tana Wood

Wolvey C of E Primary School
Bulkington Road
Wolvey
Warwickshire
LE10 3LA

Wolvey Primary School has roughly 70 service children on roll from 30 Signals Regiment and the Queen’s Gurkha Signals, which makes up approximately one third of the school population, with 20 to 30 service children leaving and joining each year.

The school believes that it is vital for all children to be supported when they first join and throughout their time at school; and that support is not necessarily about school trips or music lessons, but providing the right support when needed.

At the school SPP funding has provided a teaching assistant who is also the Service Children Liaison Officer. This role includes but is not limited to:

• running an induction and transfer programme when children start school
• leading a 6-week mental wellbeing course as part of the children’s transition into the school
• acting as an extra point of contact for parents
• attending ‘new intake’ and parents’ evenings
• keeping a record of which children are arriving and leaving (children are given ‘take away photos’ and letter boxes as presents when they go)
• taking children out of class weekly (with a teaching assistant) for informal sessions to share news, create artwork and read - children are timetabled in for this session but can also be added if their parent is on training or longer deployment

With SPP, the school also offers:

• a weekly lunchtime club where service children can bring a friend and access games, toys and IT - children can choose which activities the budget is spent on
• a diary for every service child where they can record their thoughts and feelings
• a communication book for parents
• resources such as Jofli bears for children to take home
• books about parents being deployed
• displays around the school showing where parents might be in the world, as well as where all the children are from
• social events where parents are invited into school and engage with other service parents
• a Nepalese teaching assistant who is able to support Gurkha families coming into school, and staff with any language difficulties

These provisions are a vital part of ensuring that service children settle in quickly and continue with their learning when their education may be disrupted due to transferring schools. Having members of staff who have been in the same situation also means they are able to empathise with families, offering further emotional support.