Daily roundup: Pupil premium, childcare standards and youth apprenticeships

The pupil premium is set to rise to £1,300 for each disadvantaged child by 2014, the government has said. Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg announced the increase from the current rate of £900 among a range of proposals to reform primary schools. These include a introducing a “scaled score” to assess whether 11-year-olds are “secondary ready”, and a reporting method that compares pupils against their peers nationally.

The shadow education secretary Sharon Hodgson has criticised the government for basing its childcare reforms on the French system, after its own research ranked the UK ahead of the country. The Department for Education’s comparison of international childcare systems placed the UK fourth and France seventh out of 45 countries. “[Childcare minister] Liz Truss’s big idea is to copy France – and yet her own department say the quality of care is worse across the Channel,” said Hodgson.

The number of apprenticeship places available for under 25-year-olds only accounts for just over a quarter of the total who are not in employment, education or training (Neet), research suggests. A study by think tank IPPR found 1.024m Neet young people are competing for 288,300 apprenticeship places. IPPR’s senior research fellow Kayte Lawton said the results showed the government’s youth unemployment strategy was not working.