Question to the Department for Education:

What funding he plans to allocate to schools to cover the costs of families who sign up for pupil premium later in the school year.

Pupil premium funding for the financial year 2021-22 will be based on the October 2020 census data. Pupils who become eligible later in the year will be provided for in the following year.

The move to using the October census for pupil premium funding will provide both schools and the Department with greater certainty around future funding levels earlier in the year. This will bring the pupil premium in line with the great majority of schools’ funding, which is already calculated by using data from the October census.

Pupil premium will continue to be based on “Ever6 free school meals”, whereby all pupils eligible for free school meals at the time of the October census, or at any point in the previous six years, will attract pupil premium funding. Per pupil funding rates for the pupil premium in 2021-22 will be the same as in 2020-21. As a result, we expect a typical school to see an increase in pupil premium funding from 2020-21 to 2021-22 as more children have become eligible for free school meals as a result of the impact of the COVID-19 outbreak.

In addition to the £2.5 billion in pupil premium funding for 2021-22, on 24 February 2021 the Government announced a further £300 million for a one-off Recovery Premium which will be allocated to schools based on the same methodology as the pupil premium. In this way, schools with more disadvantaged pupils will receive larger amounts.

Schools are best placed to decide how to use their pupil premium funding, and they can spend the funding on pupils who do not meet the eligibility criteria. As such, pupils that become eligible for free school meals after October 2020 can still benefit from the pupil premium.

Further information on this change can be found on gov.uk under “allocation changes from 2021 to 2022” at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium.