Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential merits of extending eligibility for Pupil Premium Plus to (a) children who have not been looked after and (b) other children in kinship care.

The department is providing over £2.9 billion of pupil premium funding in 2024/25 to improve the educational outcomes of disadvantaged pupils in England.

The criteria for pupil premium eligibility are:

• Pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals or who have been eligible in the past six years.
• Pupils who have been adopted from care or have left care.
• Children who are looked after by the local authority.

The portion of funding for looked-after children and previously looked-after children is often referred to as pupil premium plus.

Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils and schools do not have to spend this funding so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. Schools can direct spending where the need is greatest, including to pupils with other identified needs, such as children in kinship care. Schools can also use pupil premium on whole class approaches that will benefit all pupils such as, for example, on high quality teaching.

The department will continue to keep eligibility under review to ensure that support is targeted at those who most need it.