Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of school closures during lockdown on the attainment of pupil premium students.

To understand the effect of COVID-19 disruption on the attainment and progress of pupils, the Department conducted research into academic progress over the 2020/21 and 2021/22 academic years with Renaissance Learning and the Education Policy Institute. This was published on 28 March 2022 and included data from the first half of the 2021/22 autumn term. The findings from this research are available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupils-progress-in-the-2020-to-2022-academic-years.

The research found that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds, those eligible for free school meals at some point over the last 6 years, had on average experienced a greater effect on their academic progress than their non-disadvantaged peers.

The Department knows that the education of disadvantaged children has been particularly affected by the impacts of COVID-19 and the Department is committed to helping these pupils to recover and to close the attainment gap. For this reason, recovery programmes, such as the Recovery Premium, the National Tutoring Programme and 16-19 Tuition Fund, are especially focused on helping the most disadvantaged. In total, the Department has made available almost £5 billion for a multi year education recovery plan to support pupils to catch up on missed education.

Further to the recovery funding, the Department continues to provide schools with the pupil premium, which is additional funding for state funded schools to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged 5–16 year olds in England. Pupil premium rates have increased by 5% for the 2023/24 financial year, taking total pupil premium funding to £2.9 billion.