Pupil Premium

Ian Swales Excerpts

Wednesday 17th July 2013 Commons Chamber

[Mr Laws]

Yes, because the best-performing schools across the country have shown that there is nothing inevitable about those gaps. Many schools have closed the gaps very considerably. The important thing is to make sure that the accountability system is an intelligent one, as it would be possible to close the gap but at a very low level of attainment, while some of the schools that we wrote to this year had high levels of overall attainment but large gaps, so they should have been doing better for their youngsters. Our attention was drawn to schools where there was no gap, but where the attainment of disadvantaged youngsters was not good enough. The accountability will be for the gap, but also for the progress made by disadvantaged youngsters and the level of attainment of disadvantaged youngsters in a school compared with the national average. There will be no hiding place for schools that might otherwise have a small gap but at a very modest level of attainment.

[Ian Swales (Redcar) (LD)]

I warmly welcome the increase in the pupil premium and thank the Minister for visiting Grangetown primary school in my constituency to see the difference that it is making. I ask for the reception assessment system to recognise that children can be almost one year apart in a given cohort. Will the data be used to help address the attainment gap at the younger end of the cohort that tends to persist through school?

[Mr Laws]

My hon. Friend makes an extremely important point, and I very much enjoyed my visit to Grangetown primary school in his constituency. The pupils left us with a rather large picture, 6 feet tall, which is currently hanging in my office. That school, as I recall, will be a massive beneficiary of the pupil premium investment, as something like 80% of its youngsters are entitled to the pupil premium. In a very challenging environment, the school has noticed that the additional money makes a massive difference to this school’s ability to deliver for its youngsters. My hon. Friend is right to say that, particularly in the context of an early baseline test, we need carefully to consider the impact of measuring youngsters’ achievement at a very young age and the impact of their age on their likely attainment. That important point should be properly considered.