Overall Evaluation
In 2025/26, we continued to focus on good teaching, identifying needs early and making sure disadvantaged children can take part and succeed in school. This was the final year of our 2023–2026 pupil premium strategy. We have looked at what children achieved and how well our support worked.
Over the past three years, we have changed how we use extra staff and provide support. We still offer small-group and individual help where children need it, but our main focus is making everyday classroom teaching work well for everyone. This means teachers adapting lessons carefully and using additional adults where they make the greatest difference. It also helps us use our staffing and funding wisely while keeping the school budget balanced. This fits with the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) approach: start with high-quality teaching, then add targeted support and wider help where needed.
Our disadvantaged children achieved well in 2026 compared with the national figures for disadvantaged children from 2025. However, there are still gaps between disadvantaged children and their peers at Greenholm, especially in writing and combined reading, writing and maths. Attendance also remains a concern. We have made good progress, but there is more to do.
Teaching and Achievement
We have worked to improve teaching through staff training, curriculum development and shared approaches such as the Greenholm Teaching Sequence, Little Wandle, mastery in maths and the Inclusion Five. Teachers use assessment, pupil progress meetings and checks on classroom learning to identify what children need. We aim to get teaching right in class first, adding extra support when it is needed.
2026 Outcomes for Disadvantaged Pupils
| Measure | Greenholm 2026 | National benchmark 2025 |
| EYFS good level of development | 68% | 51.3%* |
| Year 1 phonics | 80% (40/50) | 67% |
| KS2 reading expected | 76% | 63% |
| KS2 writing expected | 68% | 59% |
| KS2 mathematics expected | 70% | 60% |
| KS2 combined RWM expected | 52% | 47% |
| KS2 combined higher standard | 11% | 4% |
*EYFS national figure relates to FSM eligibility, not the identical school pupil premium definition; it is an indicative comparison. Other national benchmarks are from 2025 and are not same-year comparisons.
These results show that disadvantaged children at Greenholm are achieving above the national figures for disadvantaged children, including at the higher standard. However, we have not yet closed the gaps between disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged children in our school. Writing and combined attainment remain important priorities, alongside building secure basic knowledge and challenging children who are ready to go further.
Early Language, Phonics and Reading
We use WellComm to check every child’s communication and language when they start Reception. The results help us decide who needs extra help. A teaching assistant provides speech and language support each afternoon, alongside support from a speech and language specialist. This helps us spot needs early and respond to them.
We use Little Wandle for phonics teaching and for extra help when children need to keep up or catch up. We no longer use Reading Recovery. We have kept a high level of reading support in Key Stage 1 and for some children into Year 3. This includes afternoon fluency work with additional adults, including lunchtime supervisors. In 2026, 40 of 50 disadvantaged children met the Year 1 phonics standard. This is above the 2025 national disadvantaged figure, but we know we need to keep improving outcomes and closing gaps within school.
Extra Academic Support
We continued to use additional staff for small-group teaching and individual help. Over time, we have changed how this works. Children should benefit from strong teaching alongside their classmates, rather than being taken out of lessons as the first response. Where extra support is needed, we want it to build on what is being taught in class. This also reflects the EEF’s advice that targeted support works alongside good classroom teaching.
We now want to be more precise in checking whether each intervention is working: what a child could do before, what they have learned, whether they can use it in class and whether the support needs to continue or change.
Wellbeing and Wider Opportunities
We continued to offer play therapy, nurture and wellbeing support, farm and forest school experiences and help from outside agencies. We record this support on our provision maps so that we can see which children are receiving help and review their needs.
We also made sure children could enjoy the wider life of the school. We helped with the cost of visits, residentials and other activities where needed. No child missed an educational trip or experience because of money. Children had opportunities through music, sport, outdoor learning, clubs and cultural activities. We want to get better at checking who takes part and what difference these opportunities make.
Working with Families
We worked with parents through phonics workshops, Reception bedtime story events, class assemblies, coffee mornings and other school events. Our partnership with Compass has helped families access mental health, wellbeing and family support. Having Compass available at coffee mornings and parents’ evenings has made it easier for families to ask for help and build relationships with staff.
We have seen good engagement from families, although we do not yet have a consistent way of measuring how much each activity improves children’s learning. We want to develop this further in the next strategy.
Attendance
Attendance remained a challenge for some disadvantaged children. In 2025/26, whole-school attendance was 94.05% and 17.96% of pupils were persistently absent. Attendance for children eligible for free school meals (FSM) was 92.12%, compared with 95.18% for other children. Persistent absence was 27.80% for FSM children and 12.10% for non-FSM children. For children with both FSM eligibility and SEND, persistent absence was 36.25%. FSM is not exactly the same as pupil premium eligibility, but these figures help us understand attendance among disadvantaged children.
We have not met our aim of closing the attendance gap. There is some encouraging national context: for the first five half terms of 2025/26, our FSM attendance was 92.9%, compared with 92.3% nationally. These figures cover a different period and group of pupils from our full-year school data, so they are not directly comparable.
Our analysis shows that attendance is particularly difficult for some children who have both SEND and disadvantage, and for some younger children. Pupil moves and periods of high absence also affected the figures. We will continue to work closely with families, identify problems early and check whether individual attendance plans are making a difference.
Funding and Next Steps
We used pupil premium funding to support teaching, extra academic help and wider needs such as attendance and wellbeing. We have reviewed how we use staff and resources so that children get the right help, while making sure our approach is inclusive and affordable for the school. Final spending figures should be taken from the school’s year-end financial records.
Our review has helped shape the 2026–2029 strategy. We will focus on improving classroom teaching and adaptations, raising disadvantaged pupils’ writing and combined attainment, keeping early language and phonics strong, improving attendance and checking more closely which interventions and wider opportunities make the greatest difference.
Overall, the strategy has helped disadvantaged children achieve well compared with national figures and has helped us build a more inclusive approach to support. Our next steps are to close the gaps that remain within school and make sure we can clearly show the difference our support makes.
Evidence Used
Evidence used: Greenholm’s 2026 pupil premium outcomes, 2025/26 attendance analysis, October 2026 school self-evaluation and leaders’ review of provision and family engagement. National attainment comparisons use 2025 figures. EEF guidance: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/education-evidence/using-pupil-premium .