Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she made of the adequacy of the level of the Service Pupil Premium to support the needs of military children, including for children who have attended several different schools over a short period and have a parent deployed overseas on military service.

The service pupil premium (SPP) provides additional funding for state-funded schools in England attended by children from service families. In the 2026/27 financial year it is worth £360 per service child.

The SPP is not a personal budget and schools have flexibility over its expenditure. The funding is primarily to enable schools to offer pastoral support and help mitigate the negative impact of family mobility or parental deployment. We have published advice and wider guidance for schools and local authorities on supporting service pupils, which can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/service-pupils-in-schools-non-statutory-guidance/service-pupils-in-schools-non-statutory-guidance.

In addition to the SPP, schools also attract funding for pupil mobility through the ’mobility factor’ in the schools national funding formula. In the 2026/27 financial year, schools will attract £985 for eligible primary pupils and £1,415 for eligible secondary pupils, above a threshold of 6% of the schools’ pupil numbers, where more than 6% of the school’s pupil numbers are classified as mobile.