Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the number of children from families serving in the armed forces in each local authority area who will be eligible for the pupil premium in 2015-16.

It is not possible to estimate how many children from families serving in the armed forces will be in maintained schools in England and classified as disadvantaged in 2015-16 who will attract the pupil premium until the information is gathered in the January 2015 school census.

Our analysis of data from the January 2014 school census showed that nationally there were 57,940 pupils with a parent in the armed services who attended maintained schools in England. All of these pupils attracted additional service premium funding to their school, which is intended to be used to help service children with the potential challenges they may face as a result of their parent’s service to the country.

Of these pupils, 6,161 also attracted pupil premium funding to the schools they attended in 2014-15 by virtue of being disadvantaged. The majority of these pupils (6,009) attracted the pupil premium through having been registered for free school meals at any point in the last six years. There are also 152 pupils who attracted the pupil premium through having left care through adoption, or via a Special Guardianship, Residence or Child Arrangements Order. These figures do not include those pupils who were in local authority care and were also classed as service children through having had a parent in the armed forces, as this data is currently unavailable.