Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to help ensure that pupil premium funding effectively supports the children it is provided for.

Answered by Georgia Gould - Minister of State (Education)

The pupil premium is additional funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.

This government is committed to breaking down barriers to opportunity so that all children have the freedom to achieve and thrive in education. Pupil premium supports the aim of narrowing the gap between the attainment of disadvantaged pupils and their peers. This will help to break the link between children’s outcomes and those of their parents.

We are providing over £3 billion of pupil premium funding in the 2025/26 financial year. Schools must use pupil premium funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils, and the approaches they use should be informed by evidence.

We want to support all schools to use the wealth of evidence of what works, evaluated by the Education Endowment Foundation, to use pupil premium funding effectively to drive high and rising standards for disadvantaged pupils.

Schools must spend their pupil premium in line with the department’s 'menu of approaches' which is informed by evidence of how best to improve disadvantaged pupils’ attainment.

We are reviewing how we allocate pupil premium funding in the longer term, while maintaining the overall amount we spend on tackling the challenges faced by children with additional needs. We will provide more information in due course.

Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:

To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what support his Department has provided to GP practices operating from newly built premises with (a) building and (b) maintenance issues; and what assessment he has made of the effectiveness of that support in helping to resolve those issues with landlords.

Answered by Stephen Kinnock - Minister of State (Department of Health and Social Care)

The provision and maintenance of premises is typically the responsibility of GP partners, who are either owner-occupiers or tenants of their surgery buildings. The National Health Service reimburses partners for the recurring costs of operating in the property (rent, notional rent or mortgage cost) and funds services in the GP contract.

GP owner-occupiers are responsible for all maintenance and repair of their property. For GP practices that rent their premises, their lease agreement sets out who is responsible for maintenance. A ‘Full Repairing and Insuring’ (FRI) lease requires the practice to handle all repairs, while a ‘Tenant’s Internal Repairing’ (TIR) lease means the landlord covers external and structural issues.

Commissioners may award improvement grants to GP practices to fund extensions, improvements, and enhanced physical access. This can be up to 100% of a project’s value, subject to discretion and the integrated care board’s available budget, under provisions of the NHS (General Medical Services) Premises Costs Directions 2024.

The £102 million Primary Care Utilisation & Modernisation Fund, announced at Autumn Budget 2024, is upgrading more than a thousand GP surgeries across England by April 2026.

Where facilities are an issue, it is imperative that General Practices work with the local Commissioner. There may be capital or revenue solutions to general practice premises and facilities’ needs.

Found: Slaughter (Labour; Hammersmith and Chiswick) (Chair) Josh Babarinde (Liberal Democrat; Eastbourne) Matt Bishop

Found: Campbell Nusrat Ghani Clive Jones Lillian Jones James MacCleary Andrew Murrison Apologies: Matt Bishop

Found: Campbell Nusrat Ghani Clive Jones Kate Osborne Andrew Murrison Sean Woodcock Apologies: Matt Bishop

Found: meeting held on Tuesday 7 January 2025 at 3.00 pm Members present: Steve Barclay (in the Chair) Matt Bishop

Found: held on Tuesday 3 December 2024 at 12.30pm Members present: Steve Barclay (in the Chair) Matt Bishop

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