Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her department has made of the efficacy of schools’ use of the Pupil Premium to support eligible children.

The department is providing £3.2 billion of pupil premium funding in 2026/27 to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.

To ensure pupil premium is focused on effective approaches, schools must use their pupil premium in line with the evidence-informed 'menu of approaches'.

Schools with more than 5 eligible pupils must publish a strategy statement annually on their school website using the department template. Schools are held accountable for the outcomes they achieve with all their funding, including through Ofsted inspections and by governors and trustees, and pupil premium is no exception.

An evaluation of pupil premium and recovery premium, published in March 2025, found that overall schools were positive about the impact of the funding, and 85% agreed that having pupil premium meant they had a better strategy for meeting the needs of disadvantaged pupils. The evaluation is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-and-recovery-premium-evaluation.

A report published by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in October 2025 found that generally schools’ planned spending of pupil premium aligned with the challenges identified, and that schools used a variety of evidence sources to support their choice of approaches. The report is available here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/projects-and-evaluation/projects/pupil-premium-statement-research-project.