3 September 2010
The government must put in place a series of ‘checks, balances and incentives’ to ensure its school reforms do not only benefit those from privileged backgrounds, leading social mobility charity the Sutton Trust has said.
The trust is calling for the pupil premium subsidy for disadvantaged pupils to be paid only to schools that prioritise admitting poor children. The trust’s report, Ensuringless privileged pupils benefit from the government's school reforms, has been submitted to the Department for Education in advance of the schools white paper this autumn. It also argues that schools rated outstanding by Ofsted should have local children from low-income backgrounds automatically entered into their admissions process.
Increasing numbers of schools are expected to opt out of local authority control and open as academies or free schools under new government policy. Some 142 schools have already applied for academy status since legislation was introduced in summer.
But the move has prompted warnings that such autonomy is likely to lead to greater segregation between rich and poor pupils, widening the educational attainment gap and decreasing social mobility.
The Sutton Trust says the pupil premium would need to be £3,000 per pupil, 50% higher than average funding, to have the desired impact. Academies and free schools should declare how they intend to deploy the extra resources from the premium to improve the outcomes for poor children in their funding agreements. This could be monitored by local authorities.
Other new roles for councils could include ensuring that free schools are mainly established in disadvantaged areas; advising schools on fair admissions; and publishing key schools performance measures, taking into account progress gaps between rich and poor children, on an annual basis.
A spokesman for the Department for Education said: ‘This is a really interesting report that we will study in detail. We agree that the attainment gap in our schools is too wide and we need to ensure that children from poorer backgrounds enjoy far greater opportunities in life. That is why we are introducing a pupil premium so that extra funding is targeted at those deprived pupils that most need it, as well as reforming the admissions system to make it simpler and fairer for all.’
The education white paper would set out further plans to narrow the attainment gap, the spokesman added.
Last week the children’s charity Barnardo'swarned that existing schools admissions policies were disadvantaging the poorest children.
