Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the effectiveness of the pupil premium on improving education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in schools in England; and if she will take steps to uprate the pupil premium in line with inflation.

Since its introduction in 2011, the Pupil Premium has provided additional funding for state-funded schools in England to improve education outcomes for disadvantaged pupils. Pupil Premium funding rates are increasing by 2.7% in the 2022/23 financial year, taking total pupil premium funding to over £2.6 billion. Rates for the 2023/24 financial year will be announced in due course.

In addition, £1 billion of recovery premium funding is being provided to state funded schools across the 2022/23 and 2023/24 academic years, to deliver evidence based approaches to support educational recovery of disadvantaged pupils.

To give pupils access to the best evidenced support with this funding, the Department has re-endowed the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) with £137 million. Building on their work over the past decade, the EEF will use this funding to build the Department’s understanding of what works to raise disadvantaged pupils’ attainment. From the start of the 2022/23 academic year, schools must use their funding in line with the Department’s published ‘menu of approaches’, which draws on EEF evidence to ensure they are focused on raising the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

Since the introduction of Pupil Premium in 2011, the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers generally narrowed until 2019, before the disruption to education caused by the COVID-19 pandemic contributed to the widening of the gap. The Department is committed to helping schools achieve the best possible outcomes for this funding by ensuring approaches are rooted in evidence of effective practice. The Department constantly reviews and assesses the effectiveness of the Pupil Premium to make sure it is supporting pupils facing the most disadvantage.