Okehampton College Pupil Premium Strategy Report 2022-2023
 At Okehampton College, we aim to undermine the known, damaging long-term effects of socio-economic disadvantage, profoundly believing that the background of the students we serve should have no bearing on their achievement, or on their abilities to create opportunities for themselves equitable with those that children from more advantaged backgrounds are able to create.

 We aim to ensure that all our students leave us as highly qualified, personable, and articulate young people ready to lead happy and enriching adult lives. We concern ourselves with the development of our students’ character as well as their competence, promoting our ‘CORE’ values of Community, Opportunity, Respect and Equity. We believe that excellence cannot be reached without equity, success for every child, and thus promote a consistent and collegiate focus on the provision of an equitable distribution of high educational outcomes across all our students, irrespective of socio-economic or familial circumstance — because this is how we can help create social justice, community cohesion and fairness of opportunity for all.
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The Education Endowment Foundation outlines key principles for Pupil Premium spending, including the importance of an evidence-informed approach to such. While the report acknowledges that the attainment gap between disadvantaged children and their peers ‘is stubborn because its causes are entrenched and complex, and most lie beyond the control of schools and educators’, at Okehampton College we nonetheless charge ourselves with eradicating this gap. To this end, our strategic approach to the assurance of equity for the disadvantaged students we serve (and thus how we spend HM Government’s Pupil Premium grant) is a tiered one, founded upon research evidence from a range of studies (as outlined in our summary ‘Excellence with Equity: Improving the Achievement of Disadvantaged Students at Okehampton College) and transmitted through Leadership that fosters evidence-informed approaches, plans and actions, teachers and leaders, to focus on:

Teaching (and professional learning)
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​Targeted academic support
  • for the multiple disadvantaged with enhanced risk
  • for the more able disadvantaged
Wider Strategies
  • to improve attendance
  • to improve behaviour for learning

Disadvantaged student performance overview

Metric
​2017
2018
2019
2020 (1)
2021 (2)
​Progress 8 score
0.00
-0.50
-0.63
-
-
Attainment 8 score
43.4
34.8
35.4
40.8
-
​Achieving grade 5+ in English and Maths
39%
16%
31%
25%
-
​Ebacc entry
19%
14%
31%
10%
-
​Ebacc APS
-
3.07
4.00
-
1) Summer 2020 examinations were cancelled in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Summer 2020 results were awarded instead to students as the higher of their centre assessment grade or calculated grade, based on the grade teachers’ expected students to have achieved had the examinations gone ahead.

(2) 2021 examinations have also been cancelled in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Summer 2021 results will be awarded instead to students will be awarded teacher assessed grades, which are ‘based on a range of evidence completed as part of the course… which demonstrates the student’s performance on the subject content they have been taught.’
Children in Care
 
Children in Care are supported by a dedicated team of staff.  Targets are set through the Personal Education Plan (PEP) and areas that funding is required for are identified though that process in consultation with the young person, their carers, parents where appropriate, and staff from the Virtual School.  Interventions that can supported our Children in Care include:  Extra intervention in Maths, English and Science to support achievement in those areas; trips and events aimed at raising aspirations; an annual Children in Care conference aimed at raising aspirations and looking at post 16 options; additional careers advice; visits to post 16 providers; extra mentoring using the Devon approved Attachment Based Mentoring.  This is not an exhaustive list and each package is carefully tailored around the needs of the individual student.

​In addition, all of our Children in Care receive mentoring from a Senior Leader.