Social Mobility

Baroness Thornhill Excerpts

Wednesday 29th January 2020 Lords Chamber

[Baroness Thornhill (LD)]

My Lords, I will focus on one aspect of the use of the pupil premium. It was brought in specifically to help the disadvantaged across the board, including enabling bright and able pupils to compete on equal terms with their middle-class classmates. It was targeted at those pupils whose parental aspirations and expectations were low and whose financial means were even lower—a physical, tangible means of levelling the playing field and facilitating upward mobility.

However, last year a Department for Education report on school funding found that the majority of schools were using their pupil premium to prop up their existing school budgets—something that we should be very concerned about. In particular, it was being used to employ teaching assistants, perhaps understandably.

However, a working-class youngster might need not a smaller class or a teaching assistant to improve their school achievements, but perhaps a vital piece of equipment: an iPad, music lessons or funding for cultural or educational trips and activities, or, in an area where public transport is poor and there is no mum’s taxi, the taxi fare to get home after an enriching after-school activity, the money to attend a university open day, or even a mentor/counsellor to support, guide and encourage them to believe that admission to an elite university is really “for the likes of you”. My school did that for me—#MeToo.

From my research, it is clear that the Government are coming under mounting pressure to be more “flexible” in the use of the pupil premium. Can the Minister assure us that it will still be used for this aspect of its primary purpose and will not be subsumed into the substantive schools budget? On that subject, why do maintained schools have to publish their strategy for the use of the pupil premium on their website, yet academies do not?