Pupil Premium

Alex Cunningham Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend is absolutely right. It is reassuring to be able to visit schools with very large numbers of disadvantaged youngsters, such as the one I mentioned earlier, and to see that the attainment gaps have now been extinguished. This shows schools across the country that it is possible to close that gap, and that that is not just the perspective of some DFE Minister but the experience of schools across the land that are achieving that. The huge amounts of money that we are now putting into the pupil premium and other disadvantage funding for schools with disadvantaged youngsters will remove what were legitimate excuses 10 or 20 years ago about the absence of the resources necessary to achieve these big changes. I pay tribute to my hon. Friend, who did so much in his time in the Department to champion higher standards and to pave the way for much of what is in today’s statement.

[Alex Cunningham (Stockton North) (Lab)]

Early intervention is certainly the key to the future for the hundreds of children in my constituency who have a much tougher start in life than most people. How will the Minister ensure that the pupil premium is targeted specifically on individuals rather than being swallowed up by the wider school budgets, and how will he hold head teachers to account for looking after those individuals?

[Mr Laws]

That is an absolutely crucial point. The Department is not going to go back to the fashion under some previous Secretaries of State of micro-managing individual schools and telling them what interventions they need to deliver. Schools have a better understanding of the interventions that will work for the school and the individuals than we will ever do, sitting in a Department in London. However, we are going to hold schools to account for ensuring that whatever interventions they use are successful. We have worked closely with Ofsted to ensure that this is a key part of the accountability process for schools, and that there is a much greater focus by Ofsted on narrowing the gap. The chief inspector has made it clear that schools will no longer be ranked outstanding if they are failing in this key area, and there will be a requirement on schools that are not delivering a good standard to commission support from key leaders in education, such as national leaders of education, to bring advice into the school when it is failing to narrow the gaps. We have also recently appointed the widely respected John Dunford, who has great experience in education, to serve as a champion of the pupil premium and to spread the message about best practice to schools across the country.