Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government whether, and if so when, they plan to publish a financial assessment on the impact of basing pupil premium allocations for 2021–22 on the October 2020 school census.

The January 2021 census will be used to determine pupil premium eligibility for alternative provision and pupil referral units for the financial year 2021/22. Pupil premium eligibility for mainstream and special schools will be based on the October 2020 census. We will confirm pupil premium allocations for the financial year 2021/22 in June 2021.

The department publishes information on pupil premium allocations and the number of pupils eligible annually. The most recent publicly available figures can be found via this link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2020-to-2021.

Analysts in the department are in the process of calculating the 2021/22 financial year pupil premium funding allocations, as well as the impact of using the October census to determine eligibility. We will publish the impact of the change in pupil premium eligibility in due course, close to when the pupil premium allocations for the 2021/22 financial year are published.

Per pupil funding rates will be the same as in the 2020/21 financial year, which is expected to increase pupil premium funding to more than £2.5 billion in 2021/22 as more children have become eligible for free school meals.

In addition to the pupil premium, the government announced an additional £1 billion for national tutoring on 2 June, which will see up to 100 million tutoring hours for children and young people across England: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/huge-expansion-of-tutoring-in-next-step-of-education-recovery.

£218 million of this additional £1 billion will be directed through the government’s National Tutoring Programme. This is on top of the £215 million already planned to be invested in the 2021/22 academic year and will continue to ensure that support reaches disadvantaged pupils, while giving teachers and head teachers the discretion to support the pupils they believe are most in need.

The announcement builds on previous investments worth £1.7 billion into a COVID-19 catch up fund for schools since the outbreak began, to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time and to help with wellbeing and recovery. This includes £302 million for a Recovery Premium building on the pupil premium, which will be targeted towards schools most in need to support disadvantaged pupils’ attainment.