Pupil premium 'will take cash from schools in poorest areas'

17 Nov 10
Concern is mounting over the government's pupil premium policy after independent research suggested it is likely to leave the most deprived communities worse off.

By David Williams

18 November 2010

Concern is mounting over the government’s pupil premium policy after independent research suggested it is likely to leave the most deprived communities worse off.

The premium, set to be introduced in 2011/12, is designed to direct money at the poorest pupils.

Councils are currently able to concentrate deprivation funding on schools serving pupils from the poorest wards. The pupil premium seeks to change that by giving money directly to schools based on how many pupils they have from poor backgrounds — likely to be based on whether they qualify for free school meals.

According to a report by the House of Commons Library, the premium will be worth £2.5bn by 2014/15, or 6.3% of the total schools budget – about half the proportional size of the existing deprivation fund.

The report says: ‘The impact is likely to be a shift in funding from better-funded (generally more deprived) to less well-funded (less deprived) local authorities.’

It adds that the direct schools grant – the general revenue source for schools, which is not adjusted for deprivation – will in effect be cut for all schools.

‘Only those in less well-funded (less deprived areas) can potentially benefit with additional resources from the pupil premium,’ it says.

In the most deprived areas, schools with even the highest proportions of children on free school meals could be substantially worse off under the new system.

The Waltham Forest Schools Forum in northeast London found that the schools currently awarded the most generous deprivation settlements could lose out.

For example, in Downsell Primary School, 77% of pupils live in areas in the top 20% for indices of multiple deprivation. But its additional £200,923 allocation could fall to £117,619 if money was allocated per FSM pupil.

Deprivation funding for Buxton secondary school, which serves a similar community, could more than halve.

Yet Chingford Foundation School, where less than 10% of pupils live in the most deprived communities and a similar proportion qualify for FSM, would double its extra funding.

Walthamstow MP Stella Creasy, whose constituency forms part of the Waltham Forest Schools Forum area, said: ‘Any metric you use, when you look at areas where deprivation is concentrated, there is no indication that that is going to be recognised.

‘There is concern and horror at what this might mean… money is going to be taken from poorer areas and given to more affluent areas.’

Ralph Berry, Cabinet member for education at Bradford Metropolitan District Council, told Public Finance that the reforms could ‘cost a significant number of teaching jobs’ in the city.

‘I’m truly appalled’, he said, adding: ‘Is this venal postcode politics to redistribute money out to the Tory shires? I’m hoping this is an act of ineptitude which can be corrected.’

George Phipson, funding adviser to the National Association of Head Teachers, said it was better to focus funding on schools with a generally deprived population, where social problems associated with poverty were intensified. He added that the government’s consultation document on the pupil premium appeared to imply that the least well-off schools were currently ‘grossly under-funded’.  

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