Pupil premium to start in 2011

Released 26/07/2010

Funding to help young people overcome “accidents of birth”

The coalition's proposed pupil premium to raise achievement among disadvantaged children will start from 2011, the Government announced today.

As set out in the Coalition Government document, the new pupil premium will provide additional funding for more disadvantaged pupils to ensure they benefit from the same opportunities as pupils from richer families.

Education Secretary Michael Gove and Children's Minister Sarah Teather have launched a consultation to seek views on how best to operate the premium including what deprivation indicator to use. The premium will help target money so that more can be done to help children from disadvantaged backgrounds that are still not doing as well at school as they could or should do.

Gove said: "Schools should be engines of social mobility. They should provide the knowledge, and the tools, to enable talented young people to overcome accidents of birth and an inheritance of disadvantage in order to enjoy greater opportunities.

"Children from poorer backgrounds, who are currently doing less well at school, are falling further and further behind in the qualifications race every year - and that in turn means that they are effectively condemned to ever poorer employment prospects, narrower social and cultural horizons, less by way of resources to invest in their own children - and thus a cycle of disadvantage and inequality is made worse with every year that passes."

Last year of the 80,000 pupils who had been on free school meals just 45 made it to Oxbridge, sited Gove. Just two out of 57 countries now have a wider attainment gap between the highest and lowest achieving pupils.
"This is not good enough and addressing this disparity is a top priority of the coalition government," Gove continued. "It is for this reason that we are implementing a pupil premium, to ensure that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it."

The proof is in the pudding

The latest figures available show that only 53% of 7- to 11-year-olds known to be eligible for free school meals (FSM) achieved the expected level in both English and mathematics compared with 75% for non FSM pupils and 27% of pupils eligible for FSM achieved five A*-C GCSEs or equivalent, including English and mathematics, compared with 54% for pupils not eligible for FSM.

The proposed pupil premium would provide additional per pupil funding on top of the existing funding provided to schools. Schools will be free to spend the additional funding as they choose to raise the achievement of disadvantage pupils.

The consultation on the pupil premium sets out options for how deprivation is calculated including:

• FSM eligibility - which could be current eligibility or a measure of whether the pupil has ever been eligible for FSM

• out-of-work tax credit - pupils in families in receipt of out-of-work tax credit

• commercial classifications such as ACORN or MOSAIC used by some local authorities.

In addition, the Government set out its proposal for the pupil premium to:

• include looked-after children who have consistently low attainment with only 15% achieving five GCSEs or equivalents compared to 70% of all children

• explore extending to cover service children who face unique challenges and need to be supported as they progress through school as armed forces families.

The Government also set out its proposals for distributing overall school funding from April 2011. School funding will in the short term continue to be allocated using the current method to allow the pupil premium to be introduced smoothly. However, the Government signalled its intention to review school funding for all schools including academies beyond 2011-12 and details will be announced in due course.

The school funding consultation is also seeking views on:

• ending the policy of funding a minimum of 90% of a local authority's three-year-old population

• ceasing to funding dual-subsidiary registrations at pupil referral units (PRUs)

• a proposal to allow local authorities to apply for additional funding where they have schools serving service children, whose pupil numbers are affected by troop movements

• a proposal to allow local authorities to claim for 10% of a unit of funding for home-educated pupils

• an intention to have a Minimum Funding Guarantee.

In addition, the Government announced today that all local authorities will be required to introduce the Early Years Single Funding Formula (EYSFF) from April 2011.

"For too long, Early Years funding has been inconsistent and patchy across the country - with too many children, particularly from disadvantaged families, not accessing any or all of their free nursery education hours," read a DfE statement.

The EYSFF will require all local authorities to be transparent about the funding that they are providing for free nursery education for three- and four-year-olds - so that parents and providers are able to hold their local authority to account. It will also require local authorities to fund providers for the children that attend their nursery - rather than allowing funding to be wasted on empty places.

The Government has promised to focus funding on supporting those children from disadvantaged families who benefit most from nursery education. For that reason, every local formula must include a deprivation supplement so that more money will be targeted at the children who need it most. This will be set locally in the short term, but we will look at whether - over time - it is feasible to introduce a pupil premium for the Early Years.

‘A helpful first stage'

Commenting on the consultation on proposed funding changes released today, ASCL welcomes the principle of additional funding for pupils from deprived backgrounds, as long as the baseline funding remains high enough for schools to work effectively.

ASCL policy director Malcolm Trobe said: "ASCL welcomes the principle of additional funding to follow pupils from deprived backgrounds in the form of a pupil premium and sees this best delivered as part of a national funding formula. However we are concerned that some schools may see their funding reduced and therefore there will be a detrimental impact if changes are introduced too quickly. It is essential that changes in the formula are tested carefully at school level to ensure that no institution suffers excessive turbulence in their funding. It will be important for the government to build in transition funding in the first year or two, if there are schools that will ultimately have their funding decreased.

"There must be some mechanism to ensure stability once the premium is fully introduced, so that schools do not experience significant fluctuations in funding from year to year. In addition, the baseline funding - for pupils not attracting a premium - must be high enough that those schools with no students on a premium can function adequately."

Trobe said it should be made explicit that the premium is spent at school level rather than on individual pupils so that the schools can use the funding in the way that will have the most benefit for the greatest number of pupils. In addition, he said, the indicators used to indentify students must be as accurate as possible.

"If schools will be required to demonstrate the impact of the additional funding, the premium must be significant enough to make a difference," he added. "This consultation is a helpful first stage to the discussion about the introduction of a pupil premium."

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