Clive Betts
Main Page: Clive Betts (Labour - Sheffield South East)Department Debates - View all Clive Betts's debates with the Department for Education
Services for Young People
Clive Betts Excerpts(12 years, 1 month ago)
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Mr Clive Betts (in the Chair)
Order. May I say to the hon. Lady that I am not asking for anything?
Pat Glass
Sorry, Mr Betts. I am discussing services for young people, and EMA and its abolition are as much a part of that as services through youth centres or careers services.
There is clear evidence that the pupil premium, for all its good intentions, recycles money from schools with concentrations of the poorest children and young people and siphons off resources to richer parts of the country with fewer poor children. That is because the pupil premium has largely replaced additional education needs funding, which, although it was called different things in different local authorities, was needs-based funding for schools to support their least able and most vulnerable pupils. The AEN formula in each local authority was made up of different factors, but was legally required to include a deprivation factor. Some local authorities used the index of multiple deprivation while others used free school meals, but the basis of AEN funding was a needs-based deprivation factor.
AEN also had an accumulator effect. Schools with fewer than 15% of children on free school meals got nothing in most local authorities, on the basis that that was the norm and that need could and should be met from existing school funding. Schools with between 15% and 24% had a basic level of AEN funding, but then the level escalated massively between 25% and 35% in acknowledgment of the need for additional resources to deal with more complex issues in driving improvement. Any school where more than 35% of children received free school meals was given a huge step in funding, in recognition that those schools were dealing with complex issues needing additional capacity.
The pupil premium gives a basic amount per pupil, drawing money from schools and areas with the highest concentration of free school meals and of poorer children and giving it to wealthier areas with fewer free school meals. If anybody wants evidence of what is happening in their local authority and whether they are winners or losers when it comes to the pupil premium, I can give them a breakdown, courtesy of my right hon. Friend the Member for Tottenham (Mr Lammy), who has researched the matter in detail.