Pupil Premium

(asked on 4th March 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment his Department has made of the number of children whose school will not receive pupil premium funding as a result of moving the eligibility date back from January to October.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 15th March 2021

The move to using the October census for pupil premium funding will provide both schools and the Department with greater certainty around future funding levels earlier in the year. The majority of schools’ funding is already calculated by using data from the October census.

Per pupil funding rates for the pupil premium in the 2021-22 financial year will be the same as in 2020-21, which is expected to increase pupil premium funding to more than £2.5 billion in 2021-22 as more children have become eligible for free school meals.

Pupil premium will continue to be based on “Ever6 FSM”, whereby all pupils eligible for free school meals at the time of the October census, or at any point in the previous 6 years, will attract pupil premium funding. As a result, we expect a typical school to see an increase in pupil premium funding from 2020-21 to 2021-22 as more children have become eligible for free school meals as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

Further information on this change can be found on gov.uk under “allocation changes from 2021 to 2022” at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium.

Pupil premium funding for the financial year 2021-22 will be based on the October 2020 census data provided by local authorities and academies. Pupils who become eligible later in the year will be provided for in the following year.

We will confirm pupil premium allocations for the financial year 2021-22 in June 2021.

Data on the number of pupils who have become eligible for free school meals since 2 October 2020 is currently being collected in the spring school census and is not yet available.

The Department publishes information on pupil premium allocations and the number of pupils eligible annually. The most recent publicly available figures can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2020-to-2021.

The Department did carry out an equalities impact assessment for this change.

Reticulating Splines