Pupil premium makes little difference to disadvantaged pupils, say teachers

In 2012/13 schools were allocated a total of £1.25bn funding for children eligible for free school meals, looked-after children and those with parents in the armed forces.?

But the survey of more than 260 head teachers found that only one in 10 believe the pupil premium has “significantly” changed the way they work. ?

Half of schools said the premium was helping to raise pupils’ achievement, but “relatively few could as yet provide evidence to substantiate this,” the report said.?

Inspectors warned that many schools are not disaggregating the pupil premium from their main school budgets, adding that the funding is simply being used “to maintain or enhance existing provision rather than to put in place new activity”.?

The report said: “School leaders often said they felt the pupil premium funding was not ‘additional’ money. Commonly, they felt it had replaced other funding streams that had been withdrawn.”?

Where schools were able to show how pupil premium money was being spent, a quarter said they used it to fund new teachers. Two fifths were using it to pay for teaching assistants, a tactic that was more common in primary schools. ?

A third used the premium to pay for school trips and one in six said it went towards helping families meet school uniform costs. ?

Ofsted pledged to crack down on schools that are not able to show how they are using the money to improve the lives of disadvantaged pupils and called on head teachers and governors to make sure the premium is not absorbed into mainstream budgets, but is carefully targeted at eligible pupils.?

The inspectorate said the government should consider ringfencing the money if schools do not comply, or change the way in which the premium is paid, so that it is only given to schools that actually improve outcomes for the most disadvantaged pupils.?

NUT general secretary Christine Blower said the premium is not enough to “protect schools against the real-terms cuts to their funding.”?

She said: “If the government is serious about addressing the needs of disadvantaged pupils, then funding should be available for schools to employ more qualified teachers. We know that this, alongside smaller class sizes, has the biggest impact on ensuring that all children and young people’s needs are met.”?

A Department for Education (DfE) spokesman added: “The pupil premium has only been in place for one year, but we welcome this early report by Ofsted and their recommendation that schools need to use the premium properly. We believe that Ofsted’s focus on the pupil premium will cause schools to dramatically improve the ways they use this very large amount of money.”?

He said that the DfE has commissioned Ofsted to draft a full report into the pupil premium next year.??The pupil premium was introduced in April 2011. This year £1.25bn has been made available to schools, the equivalent of £600 per pupil. The total premium will rise to £2.5bn by 2014/15.