Since the inclusion of LGfL’s Free School Meal Eligibility Checker – a tool that simplifies Free School Meal applications for parents and subsequent access to potential PPF for schools – on the #EndChildFoodPoverty website, an additional £13 million in Pupil Premium Funding has been released. This brings the total of potential PPF funding identified since the launch of the Checker in 2014 to £100 million – funding that can be used by schools for extra one-to-one or small-group support for children within the classroom, extra teaching assistants to work with classes, maths or literacy catch-up sessions before or after school, breakfast clubs to improve attendance, music lessons for children whose families would be unable to pay for them and educational trips and visits.

“54% of children in my school qualify for Free School Meals,” said Leigh Welburn, Deputy Head Teacher, Ranelagh Primary School in Newham, East London – a borough in which half of children (50%) are judged to be in households in poverty, compared to 37% in a typical London borough. Although classed as an area of high deprivation, we don’t lower our expectations of our pupils. Having a balanced meal at lunchtime is an absolute necessity for some of our children. It allows them to muster the energy to focus on learning and to be physically active. In Newham, Key Stage 2 children receive a free school lunch – our school pays towards this. During Lockdown, we were aware of families that hadn’t checked their eligibility – due to the fact that at school they receive their lunch for free. We felt so strongly about FSM that we included a link to the Free School Meal Eligibility Checker featured on Marcus Rashford’s #EndChildFoodPoverty campaign site, on our website too in a bid to encourage more parents to apply. They did.”

During Lockdown parents at Ranelagh were able to pick up weekly food bags for their children – which included a healthy balanced meal for a daily lunch. “Thank goodness for these lunches” said one parent, “I am so glad the school pointed me towards checking my eligibility for Free School Meals.”

“For each FSM child, the school receives £1345 Pupil Premium Funding – money used to provide the extra support they need to ensure that they achieve the best possible outcomes in school time and in the holidays. “PPF funding enables the school to fund residential visits and an art therapist who uses art as a medium to address emotional issues which may be confusing and distressing. Mental healthiness is a focus for all our children – having this money to ensure our most disadvantaged have the opportunities allows all our children to thrive. Pupil Premium Funding is one of the most significant and important sums of money we receive in schools because it makes a huge difference to children’s lives.”

“According to the Department of Work and Pensions, there were 4.3 million children living in poverty in the UK in 2019-202. 49 per cent of children living in lone-parent families are in poverty3,” said John Jackson, CEO, edtech charity LGfL-The National Grid for Learning.

“In November this year inflation rose to a 10 year high of 4.2% – a rise that, coupled with the end of the Universal Credit £20 uplift for struggling families, has plunged millions of British households into food poverty – the inability to obtain an adequate and nutritious diet in socially acceptable ways,” said Anna Taylor, OBE, Executive Director, The Food Foundation, who work in partnership with Marcus Rashford on the #EndChildFoodPoverty campaign and website.

The Food Foundation reports that more households in the UK with children aged 17 and under, are experiencing food insecurity now than in the first wave of the pandemic. 15% have experienced food insecurity in the past 6 months. These levels are approximately 27% higher than before Covid.

“It’s not just a question of food,” said John Jackson, “the Pupil Premium Funding that is liberated when parents register for FSM provides schools with vital additional income to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England. Evidence shows that disadvantaged children generally face additional challenges in reaching their potential at school and often do not perform as well as other pupils. No child’s life chances should be determined by their socio-economic background. It’s crucial that low income parents apply for Free School Meals now and help liberate for their school the Pupil Premium Funding that will help their children to realise their aspirations.”

The school has been awarded the School Mental Health Award by the Carnegie Centre of Excellence for Mental Health in Schools after being found to be excelling in all eight areas of the award framework.

Headteacher Clare Cantle said: “This award recognises that we, as a staff body and school community, care for one another: we express this care in so many ways, and it is humbling to know that it is being celebrated so positively.

“During months of lockdowns, our staff maintained their relationships with our families both in school for key workers and online.

“I especially consider the weekly newsletter with its holistic content to have been a personal and purposeful way to promote the bonds we have all nurtured over the years and to educate our young people no matter the obstacles.

“What we have learnt from this troubling period is that All Saints staff are there for all, all the time”.

The school was particularly praised for its work to support parents and pupils during lockdowns, with resources and workshops to help parents support their child’s mental health and additional sessions for parents to speak to teachers if they needed to.

All staff at the school are trained in mental health to offer pupils the best possible first-line support, and there is plenty in place to support their wellbeing too.

The school fully supports flexible working and striking a work-life balance. Staff have a strong sense of community and get involved in various social events and physical activities to support their mental health.

Councillor Evelyn Carpenter, Cabinet Member for School Improvement and Educational Attainment, said: “This is great news and a tribute to the creativity, care, skill and dedication of the excellent staff at All Saints School.

“Despite the difficulties posed by the pandemic, All Saints Catholic School has continued to improve the health and wellbeing of its staff and pupils.”

The first in a series of teaching aids published today focusses on the COVID vaccine and tackles head on conspiracy theories that have led to limited uptake in some communities. Immunisation coverage for all routine childhood vaccinations has declined in England by 0.2-1% between 2017-18 and 2018-19

Teachers and researchers say this is in part caused by confusing information and unfounded conspiracy theories about vaccines.

The Stephen Hawking Foundation has joined forces with a school in one of the most deprived neighbourhoods in the country and leading research institutions, Queen Mary University of London and the Vaccine Confidence Project at the London School of Tropical Medicine & Hygiene (LSHTM), to devise simple and accurate materials aimed at enabling young people to better understand and question the role of vaccinations.

The programme is the brainchild of Ed Stubbs, a secondary school teacher at Morpeth School in Tower Hamlets, East London, who became concerned at a growing sense of fear in the classroom about vaccinations and the prevalence of ill-informed conspiracy theories.

Mr Stubbs said: “As a teacher previously working in inner-city Liverpool, and now in London, I have noticed students becoming increasingly fearful of vaccination. Some of my students and their families refuse their school vaccinations. I hear incorrect, and ‘conspiracy’ information shared in my classroom. I fear that students’ real and fictional concerns increase UK vaccine hesitancy.

“The charged and often accusatory debate about vaccination choices can make young people feel hesitant about voicing their concerns and seeking help in debunking false information. They fear critical judgement over their doubts.  I decided to create a set of unbiased resources for use in schools.”

The partnership with the Stephen Hawking Foundation and LSHTM’s Vaccine Confidence Project has produced learning materials which can be downloaded for free from their and the Queen Mary University of London websites.

The resources support the Stephen Hawking Foundation’s goal to encourage science education.  It also builds on Professor Hawking’s family links with the research centre as Professor Hawking’s father was a researcher at LSHTM.

Lucy Hawking, Chair of the Stephen Hawking Foundation’s Trustees, said: “We are so pleased by this collaboration, which aims to help young people gain a better understanding of immunisation programmes. We are dedicated to encouraging young people to engage with science. This important project aims to encourage school children to think about vaccine research and the progress in this field which is key to saving lives.”

Professor Heidi Larson, Director of the Vaccine Confidence Project, said: “I feel teachers are ideally placed to combat the UK’s falling vaccination rates. This programme has been carefully calibrated to include the insights of some of the leading scientists in this field but to make the information accessible to people of all ages and communities.”

An immunologist from Queen Mary University of London, doctors, primary school specialists, teachers and students from Black and Minority Ethnic backgrounds and a prominent member of the Somali community have also fed in to the teaching materials.

The resources are designed to promote critical thinking, ask big questions and provide reliable, well sourced information to help school age students investigate complex issues regarding science and society within a classroom setting. The vaccine project is the first of a projected series of such initiatives.

For more information, please go to Vaccines – The Stephen Hawking Foundation

Developed with support from HSBC UK, the new programme aims to improve financial capabilities of one million children ages 3 to 11 over the next three years.

In addition to giving teachers and parents access to a steady stream of free, high-quality resources and guidance, they can also track and share individual children’s learning plans on the platform – notably linking progress both inside and outside the classroom for the first time.

Sharon Davies, CEO of Young Enterprise and Young Money, comments: “The Covid-19 crisis has tested the financial resilience of many families as well as disrupted in-classroom learning, elevating the need for more flexible and effective financial education resources to help young people build financial capabilities for a changing world.

“With support from our long-time programme partner HSBC UK, we have been able to develop Money Heroes as a bespoke and openly accessible platform that will evolve to help meet the needs of parents, teachers and young people, now and in the future.”

The Money Heroes online hub includes:

• A collaborative platform where parents and teachers can identify activities that children have completed
• Age-appropriate, off the shelf activities for use at home and school, including family-friendly games to play at home
• A parent guide and teacher audit tool
• A parent podcast series featuring experts in financial education, parenting and wellbeing

Other items coming next year:

• In school support for teachers, including free in-house teacher training for over 500 primary schools over 2021 and 2022
• Storybooks for KS1 and KS2, available in print and online from well-known authors and published by a top global publisher

Stuart Haire, HSBC UK’s Head of Wealth and Personal Banking, comments: “We want to help children develop financial capabilities that will help them thrive for a lifetime, that is why developing innovative and impactful programmes like Money Heroes is so important.

“And with young people predicted to be hardest hit in the years to come as a result of the current pandemic, it has never been more important to focus on the life skills required to build financial independence and resilience from an early age.”

For further information please visit https://moneyheroes.org.uk/

More than a third of primary school teachers (35%) agree. This is despite the fact that schools are now recording more information about the children they teach than ever before.

The results suggest that primary schools’ communication with parents needs to evolve, something some heads are actively addressing.

Jayne Mullane, headteacher at Mersey Vale Primary School in Stockport, remarks: “We need to listen to parents to find out what information they want to receive. In my school, parents gave us feedback on our reports and we changed them as a result. They now include information about how much effort a child makes in class as well as details of academic performance.”

The Capita SIMS survey found that knowing whether their child is happy and confident in class tops the list of information parents want to know from teachers, suggesting that mums and dads do not just want academic results on their reports.

And although three-quarters of parents (74%) stated that it was very important to have information on happiness and confidence, less than half (46%) reported actually receiving it from their child’s primary school.

Teachers too felt information on a child’s happiness was crucial, with 75% stating it was very important for parents to have this information.

Phil Neal, a director at Capita SIMS, comments: “The vast majority of parents believe teachers are doing a great job, but the research does indicate that information about how a child is doing in school needs updating.

“By asking parents what they want, schools can actually stop collecting unnecessary data and just focus on the information that really helps teachers in class and gives parents a more rounded picture of their child’s progress.

The survey also revealed that most teachers (85%) agreed that technology has a positive impact on their workload when it comes to monitoring pupil progress.

Phil Neal continues: “By making better use of the management information systems and pupil tracking software that they already have in primary schools, teachers can track a richer set of information about pupils without impacting on workload.

“Teachers could just as easily record and report on whether a child helped a friend in class or is working hard on a particular project – details that are often just as important to parents as assessment results.”

A guide for schools entitled ‘Could do better: is it time to change the school report?’ is available and can be downloaded from www.capita-sims.co.uk/evolution. It contains tips for schools on improving reporting and a list of questions parents should ask schools about pupil progress.