Bridge Academy Trust PPG Plan and Framework

Bridge Academy Trust is committed to supporting teachers and school leaders in tackling the issue of educational disadvantage. In line with our agreed values and behaviours, specifically ‘One Vision, locally shaped’, Bridge Academy Trust does not pool PPG funding: it is allocated directly to individual schools for use in line with their individual school’s PP strategy.

We expect and support all our schools to:

• Appoint a ‘Disadvantaged Champion’; this will usually be a member of the SLT.
• Appoint a member of the LGC who has responsibility for disadvantaged students.
• In consultation with our Directors of Education, design and implement an impactful PP strategy that includes how spending decisions are informed by research evidence and makes reference to a range of sources including the Education Endowment Foundation's toolkit. In line with the EEF's pupil premium guide, we encourage that activities should:
  • support the quality of teaching, such as staff professional development;
  • provide targeted academic support, such as tutoring; and
  • tackle non-academic barriers to success in school, such as attendance, behaviour and social and emotional support.
• Complete and annually update the DfE Pupil Premium Strategy template and publish this to the school’s website by December of each year.
• Engage in rigorous impact evaluation, both independently and in partnership with the central team and our formal annual review processes.

We secured Trust-wide professional development from experts such as Marc Rowland, and as a result, task our school leaders with the following ongoing aims and approaches:

1. Secure a school-wide understanding of how disadvantage impacts on pupils’ learning and broader experiences in school.

2. Secure a school-wide understanding of the schools’ main priorities for addressing disadvantage – and how those priorities present across the curriculum and in wider school life.

3. Focus on issues that are within the schools’ gift. Focus on issues that are controllable. Limit priorities to those that are most preventing pupils from thriving in the classroom and in wider school life. 

4. Ensure, across school, that there is a clear, collective understanding of (and a consistent language lexicon for) high expectations, high quality teaching, and inclusivity

5. Improve reading standards. We understand that if pupils become strong readers they will thrive in the classroom. Understand that our efforts to address disadvantage pivot on how well pupils develop their reading comprehension skills.

6. Effective poverty proofing to support disadvantaged pupils to thrive. This should cover both the formal and informal curriculum, as well as uniform, equipment and other resources.

7. Support students to have good friends and have meaningful interactions with peers across socio economic groups.

8. Provide additional targeted academic support to raise outcomes of disadvantaged students, closing attainment gaps.