Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to monitor spending of the pupil premium during the covid-19 outbreak.

All local authority-maintained schools, and most academies and free schools, are required to publish and maintain an online pupil premium strategy statement that sets out the rationale for their spending decisions and how the impact of the approaches chosen will be measured.

In planning their pupil premium expenditure, schools are encouraged to make use of high quality evidence on effective practice in raising disadvantaged pupils’ attainment, such as that published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) on its website, which is available here:
http://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk.

Based on extensive research conducted since 2011, the EEF recommends that schools give priority in their pupil premium spending to recruiting and developing high quality teachers, followed by targeted academic support and wider strategies to address non-academic barriers to success in school.