Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the effectiveness of using free school meal eligibility for the purposes of allocating Pupil Premium funding.

In July 2010, the previous Government launched a consultation on introducing a pupil premium. This identified potential indicators for distributing the pupil premium towards economically disadvantaged pupils. These included: current and historic Free School Meal (FSM) eligibility, an indicator based on a pupil’s family being in receipt of out of work tax credits; and area-based measures of deprivation such as Mosaic or Acorn.

In response to the consultation, it was concluded that the best available indicator used to reflect socio-economic disadvantage from 2011-12 onwards would be FSM eligibility, because this is the only current pupil-level indicator; it is familiar to parents, schools and local authorities; it is easily collected and updated annually; and schools will know precisely which of their pupils are eligible. Furthermore, there is strong evidence that pupils who are currently or have recently been eligible for FSM have lower educational outcomes than their peers. In 2011-12, the pupil premium was allocated to schools on the basis of pupils currently FSM eligible; and from April 2012 onwards on the basis of pupils who have been FSM eligible at any point in the last six years. The consultation response is available here: http://media.education.gov.uk/assets/files/pdf/t/the%20school%20funding%20settlement%20for%202011%2012%20the%20pupil%20premium%20and%20dedicated%20schools%20grant.pdf