Secondary schools are so desperate for funding that 45% have used pupil premium to plug budget holes in 2025 – up from 32% in 2024, according to the Teacher Voice Omnibus Survey, conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research (NFER) for social mobility charity The Sutton Trust.
It is the highest rate since 2017, when the trust’s poll began and backs up concerns raised last month by the parliamentary Public Accounts Committee, that billions of pounds of funding associated with tackling disadvantage may not be benefiting these pupils.
Despite siphoning the funding in this way, half of secondary schools have been forced to make cuts to numbers of teaching staff (50%) and teaching assistants (51%), up from 38% and 41% last year.
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