The pupil premium amounts to £1.25bn this year, and is planned to double over the next two years. Local authorities have of course allocated funding to address deprivation for years. But the pupil premium is a welcome initiative, as it is new money that must be spent explicitly on reducing disadvantage. This year, a small proportion of the money – about five per cent – has been allocated to two-week summer schools to help disadvantaged children who will be transferring to secondary school in the autumn. This amounts to just over £750 a child – a useful sum.
The summer schools are being run by secondary schools, and include a range of catch-up, familiarisation and motivational activities, with individual schools deciding the detailed programme. It is an exciting approach that enables secondary schools and primaries to work with local authorities’ music, sports and arts services – insofar as they still exist – to help year 7 pupils hit the ground running in September.
So why am I so keen on the idea? First, the government is genuinely trusting schools to deliver, and has not followed the route of letting a national contract through one of the large private providers, which would add bureaucracy and central costs. Second, children are meeting the same teachers they will work with in September, and teachers are able to begin building effective relationships outside of the constraints of the formal curriculum. I am sure this will have positive effects on behaviour and learning right from the start.
This might be seen as an imposition on teachers, biting into their summer break. Certainly, some will have booked holidays that clash with summer schools. But we must always remember that schools are there for the pupils and not the teachers. If this is the start of a long-term shift away from agricultural terms with long holidays designed to allow children to help with the harvest, and a move to a more professional working pattern for teachers based on children’s needs, then where is the argument?
Let’s just hope that summer schools survive beyond being just an “initiative”.
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
