Please read the information below which gives details of our Pupil Premium Grant and how we allocate the funding.

We use our Pupil Premium to enable the most disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils within the Borough to access elements of the curriculum that they may have missed due to exclusion or poverty.

We look at individual interests and tailor our provision accordingly. Our rationale for this is simple - our pupils have arrived from a wide variety of settings and may have been excluded from education for long periods - and so we try to find in-roads to allow them to trust and most importantly, try new things.

The main barriers to learning for our pupils are both their extreme behaviours and low self esteem. Our pupils will have extensive breaks within their early education, which results in heightened anxieties in all areas of learning.

The main barriers to our young men's attainment/achievement are complex:

• Trauma/Anxiety which manifests in deregulated behaviour
• Suspension (both fixed term, internal and 'soft')
• Mis-diagnosis or delayed diagnosis
• Mental Health

As a school, we have looked at our behavioural and academic data to analyse where we need to support our young men further:

Breakfast : our young men find it very complex to arrive at school prepared for the day. They arrive either not eaten from the day before, or due to their mental health or physical needs, require further breakfast. We provide this in order to help settle them into the mind set of the day ahead and allows an informal 'check in well being' session with staff, who can pinpoint and signpost any potential difficulties.

School Meals : although some of our pupils will be entitled to a Free School Meal, the stigma some of our young men carry due to family circumstances (i.e. low income families) would mean that they would not get a meal throughout the day. We want our young men to feel valued and as such all are able to access a FSM without question. This seemingly small gesture allows them to lower their anxieties, concentrate well and engage with the pressures of their learning.

Oak Lodge: our young men are highly complex and some have more complexity than others which has either not been addressed by services or couldn't due to their mental health. We have recently opened Oak Lodge - a space where we can continue our successfully trialled outreach work in a more formalised setting. This work allows us to support them academically and ensure that they gain some qualifications, a secure destination for Y12 and using our Trauma Informed Trained staff to help guide them through some of their needs. The total allocated does not take into account the full cost of this service - or the additional mental health support allocated including Forensic CAMHS, but gives us options to tackle quite serious mental health manifestations during the day as well as support their next steps.

School Journey : for the vast majority of our young men, they will not have experienced visits due to their behaviours or mental health. We actively encourage our staff to take pupils out on visits to give them a clearer understanding of the world outside of school and the opportunities that can be afforded to them.