Conclusions and recommendations
1.The Department has demonstrated the potential of the Pupil Premium, but it has not yet set out how it will judge success. The attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers has narrowed since 2011 at both primary and secondary school level, but the gap remains large and progress has been uneven across the country. It is clear that the full impact will not be seen for a number of years. But in a time of continuing austerity, the Department will need to be constantly ready to demonstrate the policy’s emerging impact in terms that are as specific and clear as possible. The Department needs to be a stronger champion of the policy, as value for money and effectiveness are measured over longer time periods than for some other policy areas. Recording the destinations of children after school may be a useful contribution to the measurement of impact but this will depend on how and when the Department decides to do this.
Recommendation: In line with its original objective to obtain significant impact in primary schools by 2015 and in secondary schools by 2020, the Department should urgently define what “significant” means, setting out its timetable for action as soon as possible. It should also set out how it will track and report on the post-school destinations of pupils.
2.While the evidence base for what works is growing, the Department does not do enough to make sure this good practice is adopted in weaker schools. Schools have the autonomy to use the Pupil Premium in whatever way they feel will have the biggest impact, which is welcomed by head teachers. To date, the Department has supported schools to use the Pupil Premium effectively primarily by funding the Education Endowment Foundation to carry out research into the evidence base for what works. However, it has done less to incentivise schools to use best practice and only recommends, rather than mandating, Pupil Premium Reviews for schools that do not use funding well. This is particularly worrying given concerns expressed to us that schools that perform poorly are less likely to seek out advice for themselves.
Recommendation: As the evidence base grows, the Department should develop the necessary mechanisms to make sure schools use effective interventions with disadvantaged pupils. In addition, the Department should make Pupil Premium Reviews mandatory for those schools identified as using the Pupil Premium ineffectively. The Department should ensure that schools share best practice on how to use the pupil premium effectively. It should consider how best to encourage weaker schools to participate and set out its action plan and timetable to achieve this.
3.The Department and the Education Endowment Foundation do not understand enough about the reasons why disadvantaged pupils from some backgrounds do markedly better at school than others. Pupils from some geographical areas seem to face more challenges than others. For example, some deprived rural and coastal areas have entrenched social problems that appear to impact adversely on schools’ ability to help disadvantaged pupils to progress quickly. In contrast, pupils from some cultural backgrounds tend to attain well, most strikingly Chinese pupils, whose attainment is very high irrespective of their level of disadvantage. The Education Endowment Foundation and others have done work on raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils with specific characteristics, such as those with English as a second language. However, there is clearly an opportunity to learn from groups, ethnic or otherwise, in which only small gaps exist between disadvantaged and other children.
Recommendation: The Education Endowment Foundation should carry out and then disseminate research into the reasons why disadvantaged pupils from certain communities do better at school than others.
4.Parental engagement is important if a child is to do well at school but some schools are struggling to challenge disengaged parents effectively. Almost all school leaders identify parental engagement as a barrier to closing the attainment gap but many schools do not use the Pupil Premium to address this concern. This is partly due to a debate within the schools sector about whether support for pupils should extend beyond the school gates. While there is good practice in some schools, poor parental engagement remains an issue that is both under-researched and, too often, unaddressed.
Recommendation: The Department should clarify the circumstances in which it expects schools to challenge parental disengagement and, in collaboration with the Education Endowment Foundation, should improve guidance about what schools should do. It should also set out what work could be done to join up other public and third sector groups to ensure that parental support, or lack of it, is addressed across the board.
5.The Department has not yet resolved the potentially destabilising impact that Universal Credit may have on its ability to identify disadvantaged pupils. Universal Credit, which will see five benefits combined into one, means the end of the current basis for determining free school meals and therefore Pupil Premium eligibility. The Department does not yet know how it will identify disadvantaged pupils following Universal Credit’s introduction, and there is relatively little time to find an answer. There has also been substantial variation in the level of under-claiming between local authorities. In 2013, in some areas more than 30% of eligible pupils did not take up their free school meals entitlement compared to 0% in other areas. The Department told us that it wanted to target local authorities where under-claiming was high, so that schools do not miss out on funding because parents fail to claim.
Recommendation: The Department should write to the Committee, within 6 months, to update us on its plans to mitigate the risk that Universal Credit will make it harder to identify all genuinely disadvantaged pupils. In addition, the Department should ensure local authorities encourage all eligible parents to register for free school meals. The Department should also be clear about how it intends to incentivise local authorities to do this well.
6.It will be important to monitor the impact of spending on the recently introduced Early Years Pupil Premium. Some children from disadvantaged backgrounds are starting school under-prepared and developing more slowly than their peers. Evidence shows that there may be more that can be done to tackle the impact of deprivation on a child’s progress in the years before starting school. Given the Education Endowment Foundation’s concerns that disseminating best practice will be harder in primary and secondary schools, it is vital that the Department address this issue early on. The Early Years Pupil Premium was introduced earlier this year to try and address this issue. Spending more in the early years is likely to have great economic benefits at a later date, but the likely impact of the Early Years Pupil Premium, worth up to £300 per child, is not yet known as it is in its first year of operation. We intend to return to the subject of Early Years provision in future.
Recommendation: The Department should review the level and effectiveness of the Early Years Pupil Premium after its first year of operation.
7.There continues to be wide variation in the funding given to schools, even those dealing with similar levels of disadvantage. Pupil Premium is funded on a rational per capita basis but the Department does not have a similarly rational basis for setting overall funding for disadvantaged pupils. This leads to unexplained variations in school funding, with some schools receiving around £3,000 a year more than others for each disadvantaged pupil. The £390 million given to 69 local authority areas with the lowest levels of school funding is a step in the right direction but there is much more to do. The Department recognises that the funding formula for schools is outdated, and the Government has committed itself to reviewing the distribution of funding to schools so it becomes fairer.
Recommendation: The Department should set out a clear timetable for completing its review of the schools funding formula and should make sure this review leads to a more structured and evidence-based approach to setting overall funding for schools with similar levels of disadvantage.