Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effectiveness of Recovery premium funding.

The Recovery Premium, worth over £300 million, was introduced in the 2021/22 academic year as a direct grant for schools to deliver evidence based approaches to support educational recovery of disadvantaged pupils. As part of the 2021 Spending Review, the Government announced an extension to the Recovery Premium worth £1 billion across the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years. This funding is in addition the Pupil Premium funding for state funded schools in England to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils.

To help schools focus on the most effective approaches to raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils, they must use their Recovery Premium and Pupil Premium funding in line with evidence based approaches, drawing on the evidence of what works provided by the Education Endowment Fund. Schools are required to publish an annual strategy statement for the academic year by 31 December, setting out how they plan to spend the Pupil Premium and the Recovery Premium, and demonstrating that their approach is informed by evidence. The Department will undertake monitoring checks on a sample of schools’ published reports.

The Department contracted with Ipsos MORI, in consortium with Sheffield Hallam University and the Centre for Education and Youth, to undertake a mixed methods study design to understand how recovery strategies have been implemented, and how best to support schools in future. The year 2 findings of this study were published in January 2023, available at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1131182/School_recovery_strategies_year_2_findings.pdf.

The Department continues to monitor levels of attainment to understand the effect the COVID-19 pandemic and education policies.