Free School Meals

You may have heard about the Government initiative, the “Pupil Premium”. It is a grant available for schools, determined by the number of students eligible.

If your child is in receipt of Free School Meals (FSM), or has been within the last 6 years, this grant is then offered to the school to support your child’s learning. The Pupil Premium is targeted funding; we have to demonstrate to the Government how we use the funding to benefit your child.

There is a Pupil Premium strategy. This includes extra-curricular activities, literacy and numeracy assistance plans, homework clubs and revision clubs; all designed to enhance your child’s education. If you are successful in registering for FSM, your child immediately receives the benefit of school lunches. You may have made the decision to provide your child with a packed lunch out of preference. Consider that if you choose your own packed lunch option, then you should still register with the school so that school are in receipt of this grant.

Schools will receive a further £935 for each student in year 7 to year 11, registered as eligible for free school meals (FSM) at any point in the last 6 years:

If you think your child might be eligible for free school meals please apply by following the link below:

Apply for free school meals

Free School Meals FAQ

How we use the additional funds to support your childs education

At RFSS we ensure the grant is allocated to allow everyone the chance to be successful. All of the strategies that we have put in place have been chosen based on research, primarily from the Education Endowment Foundation, The Sutton Trust and Ofsted.

Our four key areas of focus are literacy, the aspirations of our students, supporting our students social and emotional need,s as well as supporting educational needs, and finally ensuring all students, especially those who are most disadvantaged, attend school.

The Education Endowment Foundation’s research showed that there is a marked gap between the attainment of students from the most and least advantaged backgrounds, and that the attainment gap is largest for children and young people eligible for free school meals. The gap grows wider at every following stage of education: it more than doubles to 9.5 months by the end of primary school, and then more than doubles again, to 19.3 months, by the end of secondary school. This shows the importance of intervening early, and then of continuing to attend to the needs of disadvantaged students. Our goal is to close this gap.

Research from the EEF and The Sutton Trust shows that in order to raise academic achievement for all students, we must first raise their levels of literacy; that teaching students a range of techniques such as referring meaning from context to improve reading comprehension can increase progress by 5 months. Research by Ofsted has also highlighted that this is most effective when there is a whole school approach to Quality First Teaching. This also helps to show students how to achieve the aspirations they have.

Working with students to improve their social and emotional well-being through learning strategies such as working alongside peers, teachers, family or community can improve learners progress by 4 months, helping to close the gap between the most and the least disadvantaged.

For all our strategies to work, however, we must have students in school – evidence from Ofsted on effective use of pupil premium spending identifies that removing barriers such as low attendance can have a significant improvement on outcomes for pupil premium students, and therefore this is always going to be a priority for RFSS.