Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate she has made of the take-up of the service pupil premium in the last 12 months.

The Service Pupil Premium (SPP), which was introduced in April 2011, is additional funding that schools receive to support the educational needs of their pupils who are currently or have recently been Service children in recognition of the specific challenges children that service families face and as part of the commitment to delivering the armed forces covenant. The following table sets out the numbers of pupils attracting the Service Pupil Premium since its introduction:

We have allocated more than £22.0 million in 2016/17 financial year to support the needs of over 73,000 Service pupils through the SPP.

Schools are encouraged to identify children eligible for the SPP in their school census returns and the funding is allocated to schools based on these returns.