Our ultimate objective for all of the students at Cape Cornwall School is that they all, whatever their background and starting points, leave with high value achievements that enable them to access the next stage of their education. As important is our desire for our young people to develop the personal skills and attributes that are so important if they are to flourish in adulthood. At the centre of our school ethos is our sense of community of which we are very proud. We strive to ensure that all students are valued and have a sense of belonging – this has been particularly important following the two
national lockdowns where isolation (and especially rural isolation) was a real challenge.

Often disadvantaged students face all sorts of barriers that can slow progress: in line with students nationally, our disadvantaged students can suffer from instability in home life and accommodation, lower attendance than their non-disadvantaged peers; a propensity to lack resilience and a dearth of vocabulary and cultural capital. All these factors can impact unfavourably on behaviour and attitudes. Again, many of these factors have been exacerbated during the national lockdowns. Our principal aim is to identify these barriers and other ‘risk factors’ so that we can use our unique position as
a smaller school to work closely with all of these individuals and their families to overcome barriers to learning and to progress.

The ambition for Cape Cornwall School is that our disadvantaged students achieve significantly better than their peers nationally and as well as their non-advantaged peers. This is to be reflected in their academic outcomes and progress. In particular, there is a focus on literacy and numeracy – our ambition is that all disadvantaged students develop the literacy and numeracy skills to give them confidence to confidently move into post-16 provision so they can all progress to become fully
functional adults.

To enable students to be successful, they must attend school every day. That is a given. There needs to be a sense of urgency here as across all cohorts in the school, attendance has historically been a challenge and particularly for disadvantaged students. Attendance for disadvantaged students needs to be significantly higher than their peers nationally and Persistent Absence rates significantly lower. Overall, attendance needs to be in line with non-disadvantaged students and above the
national average. Linked to this, and fundamental to good attendance, is students’ wellbeing and a sense of belonging. School needs to be a place that is welcoming, where every student feels part of the school community. At Cape Cornwall, our ambition is that this is achieved through whole school events, opportunities to be successful in and out of lessons and working towards common goals.

As well as improving attendance, there needs to be a reduction in behaviour points and Fixed Term Exclusions for all students but especially for disadvantaged students who have gained more than their non-disadvantaged peers in recent years. Like
attendance, this is a key priority that can be achieved through a sense of community and belonging, a shared investment in the ‘way we do things round here’ from all our stakeholders. Our ambition is to support the personal development of our disadvantaged students by making sure that there is a wide range of extra-curricular activities, e.g. our ‘Be Inspired’ programme, the plans for our ‘Academy’ programme, Student Council and the prefect system and that there is equality of access for all our students, whatever their background. There is a proven link between poor behaviour
and disengagement and a lack of a sense of belonging.

This Pupil Premium Strategy outlines the challenges that we face at Cape Cornwall School. By closely linking this strategy to our School Development Plan we outline the approaches we plan to take, using our Pupil Premium and catch up funding to support
this work, drawing on published research and accepted approaches to maximise the impact of our various interventions.