Marlborough St Mary’s’ engaging, active curriculum is inclusive and experiential. Being aware of the need to deepen our disadvantaged learners’ experiences, We enrich children’s learning through practical, cross-curricular activities, which build curiosity and resilience.

We know that our disadvantaged learners need a caring, inclusive environment, and we base this on Christian values. We foster creativity, imagination and a love of learning that will build self-sufficiency and develop children’s independence to become life-long learners.

It is important that our curriculum is challenging, sequential and aspirational, building knowledge and skills while linking to real life experiences, preparing our disadvantaged pupils to take their place as global citizens.

It is our intention that all pupils, irrespective of their background or the individual challenges they face, make good progress and achieve high attainment throughout the full curriculum. The focus of our disadvantaged learners’ strategy is to provide the targeted support for all disadvantaged learners so that they can achieve their full potential.

We know that the starting point for helping our disadvantaged learners make the best possible progress is to first diagnose their needs. With this in mind, we have bought into three services that will identify the needs of our disadvantaged learners through a rigorous approach to internal data.

PIRA and PUMA testing and the accompanying data analysis will allow teachers, subject leaders and the senior leadership to identify any knowledge gaps and quickly adapt the quality first teaching and interventions being delivered to address these gaps. INSIGHT will gather all of our data in a single location and give all staff the ability to identify the differences in performance between our disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children and take steps to close this gap. 

It is vital that all staff are aware of the groups needs of all children. This is why we have linked this knowledge to the performance management of all teaching staff including Teaching Assistants. All staff have the list of all disadvantaged learners in class and are expected to know who these children are as well as if they have any special educational needs. This will allow teaching staff to target their teaching and interventions to each child’s individual needs.

All planning will also list the children with a pupil premium flag so that teachers and teaching assistants can target them with support in class.

We are also aware of the gap that disadvantaged children have with their non-disadvantaged peers in vocabulary therefore, we are making this the focus with our subject leaders. All leaders are now putting vocabulary development at the core of their subject intent.

We believe that it is our duty to develop the whole child. Our disadvantaged children get significantly less cultural experience than their peers. Because of this, we have appointed a Cultural Enrichment lead to ensure that our disadvantaged children can access a wide variety of experiences.

There is a significant crossover between our Disadvantaged Pupils and our Young carers. We have appointed a Young Carers lead whose staring point is to identify children who are young carers and may not be aware of this and to support them.  

As a school we consider the range of potential challenges faced by all vulnerable pupils, including those who have a social worker or are a young carer. Our pastoral team has a deep knowledge of the children and families and work closely with the families to provide the support that they need.

Quality First Teaching is at the heart of our approach with a focus on developing those areas in which our disadvantaged pupils require the most support. This is proven to have the greatest impact on closing the disadvantage attainment gap and at will also benefit all the pupils in our school. Implicit in the intended outcomes detailed in this strategy, is the intention that non- disadvantaged pupils’ attainment will be sustained and improved as well as the increased progress for their disadvantaged peers.

Our strategy is also aligned to our wider school plan for education recovery following the pandemic. This includes use of staff within the school running additional, bespoke tutoring- style interventions for pupils whose education has been most adversely affected.

The approach at Marlborough St Mary’s will be responsive to common challenges and individual needs. Support needs will be identified through a range of formal and informal assessment tools. The activities we implement complement each other in order to allow pupils to excel. To ensure they are effective we will:

• Ensure disadvantaged pupils are challenged appropriately in the work that they are provided
• Act promptly to intervene early at the point where need is identified
• Implement a whole school approach in which all staff take active responsibility for disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes and have high expectations of what each pupil can achieve.