What is the Pupil Premium?

The Pupil Premium

In April 2011, the Department for Education (DfE) introduced the Pupil Premium and the Service Premium. This gave schools £625 million of extra funding to close attainment gaps for disadvantaged pupils and to assist with the pastoral needs of children with parents in the armed forces.

The pupil premium is designed to address inequality by giving every school and teacher the resources they need to help their most disadvantaged pupils, allowing them the freedom to respond appropriately to individual circumstances.

The pupil premium gives schools extra funding to raise the attainment of disadvantaged pupils from reception to year 11 and to close the gap between them and their peers.

The DfE introduced a fund of £625 million in April 2011 to give schools £400 per year for children who:

• were registered as eligible for free school meals
• had been looked after for 6 months or longer

From April 2012, the DfE extended pupil premium funding to children eligible for free school meals at any point in the past 6 years. For the 2016 to 2017 financial year schools will receive:

• £1,320 per pupil of primary-school age
• £1,900 per pupil who:
  • has been looked after for 1 day or more
  • has been adopted from care
  • has left care under a special guardianship order, a residence order or a child arrangements order

School accountability for the pupil premium

The pupil premium is paid to schools as they are best placed to assess what additional provision their pupils need.

Ofsted inspections report on how schools’ use of the funding affects the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.

The DfE also hold schools to account through performance tables, which include data on:

• the attainment of the pupils who attract the funding
• the progress made by these pupils
• the gap in attainment between disadvantaged pupils and their peers

Schools maintained by the local authority must publish their strategy for using the pupil premium on their website.