Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what evaluation her Department has undertaken of the effectiveness of Pupil Premium Plus funding in improving educational and wellbeing outcomes for adopted children.

The pupil premium grant provides funding to schools to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. ‘Pupil premium plus’ (PP+) refers to the portion of the grant for children who are looked-after by the local authority or were previously looked-after by a local authority or other state care.

The pupil premium Conditions of Grant set out that maintained schools and academies must publish annual strategy statements setting out their planned use of pupil premium. Governors and trustees should scrutinise schools’ strategy statements, including their plans for and use of their pupil premium grant and the outcomes achieved in the previous academic year.

Pupil premium funding, including PP+, is not a personal budget for individual pupils. It is for schools to decide how to allocate the funding, after assessing the needs of their disadvantaged cohort, including looked after and previously looked after children. Pupil premium guidance supports school leaders to use their funding effectively. This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2025-to-2026/pupil-premium-conditions-of-grant-for-the-2025-to-2026-financial-year.

Designated teachers statutory guidance is clear that the school’s designated teacher should ensure the specific needs of the PP+ cohort are understood by the school’s staff and reflected in how the school uses PP+ to support these children. They should use parents and guardians’ insights to support decisions on how the PP+ is used. This guidance can be found at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/designated-teacher-for-looked-after-children.

An evaluation of pupil premium was published in March 2025. This included findings that 58% of schools and 70% of trusts identify looked-after children as one of the groups who most benefit from pupil premium funding. This evaluation can be accessed at: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/67dd5b7f0114b0b86e59f42b/Pupil_premium_and_recovery_premium_evaluation.pdf.