This does not come as a surprise to me because the pupil premium is new, schools are still learning how best to deploy the extra cash and measurable outcomes take time to come through.
Just as it is hardly surprising that the 2,000 summer schools for pupils moving to secondary school have not yet had a measurable effect – there hasn’t been time.
I have no doubt that clear evidence of effectiveness will emerge. And it’s important that it does over the next two years, during which the pupil premium is due to increase to a total of £2.5bn, otherwise the whole enterprise will be put at risk after the next general election.
Despite Ofsted’s negative report on the pupil premium, the new schools minister David Laws has confirmed plans to increase the amount allocated next year by 50 per cent, fulfilling a key plank of the Liberal Democrat manifesto.
This announcement will be very helpful in demonstrating that the pupil premium is not a “here today, gone tomorrow” grant.
Laws says that head teachers must not be micromanaged and should be free to spend as they see fit. However, buried in the small print is the fact that the “per pupil” element of the premium is increasing from £600 to £619 – just three per cent – with the bulk of the increase allocated to summer schools for the eligible pupils. This is hardly a vote of confidence in head teachers to make their own decisions on spending.
Pupil premium allocations are based on free school meal registrations, and therein lies a serious problem that local authorities and schools can easily – or with only a little trouble – solve.
The Institute for Social and Economic Research reports that many families do not take up free school meals because they fear being singled out as being poor. So the family and the child lose meals worth perhaps £400, and the school loses the pupil premium of £600. That could be changed by introducing anonymised payments, as the best local authorities and schools have done.
John Freeman CBE is a former director of children’s services and is now a freelance consultant Read his blog at cypnow.co.uk/freemansthinking
