Pupil Premium funding was introduced to enable schools to target pupils who were on Free School Meals (FSM) or Service Children. Additional funding for summer schools, following the riots of 2011, was made available to schools who wished to apply to put on activities against criteria set by the government. The summer school funding was limited to one or two week’s activities during the school summer holidays.

Heworth Grange has historically had a high number of FSM entitlement and uptake (entitlement of 238 in 2011, 256 in 2012 and 255 in 2013). Of those entitled, the uptake has increased significantly this past year due to the governing body taking the decision, following completion of building works, to ensure all pupils remained on site (29.1% in 2011, 40.4% in 2012 and 77.7% in 2013). The number of Service Children (SC) is low 2 in 2011, 2 in 2012 and 2 currently).

The decision to keep pupils on site was made for a number of reasons: complaints from the community regarding nuisance behaviour like littering, trying to make sure pupils had a healthy meal, and ensuring the safety of pupils throughout the day.

As the number of pupils on site increased dramatically, the school needed to look at what was available during the lunch hour to keep large numbers of pupils occupied.

As well as ensuring all pupils remained on site, the school timetable and therefore the school day and week were changed. This meant an earlier start and an earlier finish, with a shorter lunch and an even earlier finish on a Wednesday when whole staff training took place. Some parents advised the school that they had childcare issues on the Wednesday.

An audit of activities was carried out by the Business Manager and the school already had a lot of activities like music groups, history clubs, lunch clubs taking place. After school there were also a lot of activities like band, dance and PE clubs.

However, a market was identified for activities for larger groups, as well as gaps in the interests currently being covered.

Holiday periods was a particular problem as the buildings were open but there were generally no activities taking place.

Keep Kids Active was not known to the school prior to this piece of work. following the successful application for summer school funding in 2011, we asked them to put on a range of sporting activities during two weeks as a trial. The ‘summer camp’ was targeted towards the Y6 pupils in our cluster schools who would be attending our school in September and who were either FSM or SC. The aim was to introduce these pupils to our school in a less formal way than during transition activities which are held each year. A further aim was to provide a childcare service to parents in the community. In the event the camp was a massive success and exceeded initial expectations considerably. The number of children who were targeted was approximately 2,500 and the number who attended was 1,260. The activities they carried out were: Basketball, Cricket, Dodgeball, Football, Rounders, Dance, Multi Skills, Mini Olympics to name a few.

Following the success of the summer camp, further meetings took place with the school and KKA and we asked them to continue to provide holiday camps during each holiday period for the next academic year. These continue to be well attended and will therefore continue to run.

After we discussed the on-going holiday camps, we asked them to look at what they could provide in terms of activities during the lunch and on the Wednesday afternoons. The Business Manager met with the pupils and they came up with a list of activities they would like to see and this was passed by KKA. The result of this was a daily film club which has a large number of attendees, a sport skills club which was aimed at targeted year 8 boys and three clubs on a Wednesday: film club, sports club and homework club.

The school has further activities imminent – a new ‘arts and craft’ club will start after Easter, a football club in the summer, and other clubs will come online later in the year.

The work we have carried out with KKA has been very successful. We have been able to use the Pupil Premium funding appropriately and have been able to demonstrate this in our recent Ofsted inspection. The cost of the activities is low, which means they are more likely to be sustainable. They meet a childcare gap on Wednesdays. they help children socialise with pupils who are not normally in their usual friendship groups or classes. They help children keep fit and occupied. They have helped with behaviour management as challenging students now have an activity they enjoy during lunchtime.

Hopefully, we will continue to add new groups and clubs in the next academic year and our relationship with KKA will go from strength to strength.

Deborah Patterson, Business Manager, Heworth Grange Comprehensive School