The new government should use falling pupil numbers to boost funding for the worst-off pupils, the Education Policy Institute has said.
A report from the think tank renewed its calls for better targeted funding towards “persistently disadvantaged” pupils, and said doing so could cost as little as £80 million a year.
The current system allocates extra funding based on free school meals eligibility at some point in the preceding six years.
But researchers have warned pupils who are persistently disadvantaged – those eligible for free school meals for at least 80 per cent of their time in school – are much further behind their peers.
EPI CEO Natalie Perera said pupils who have been on free school meals for the vast majority of their school lives “are, on average, nearly two years behind their peers”.
“Even more distressing is that, for this very vulnerable group, the gap today is as wide as at any point in our time series. For all our efforts from national policy to the classroom, we have not made any real impact for children living in persistent poverty.”
She said the latest report “looks at how we can make some efforts to change that, through increased and targeted funding to disadvantaged pupils”.
“It recommends that the government targets at least £640 million to this group by the end of the spending review period, money which can be found from the forecast reduction in pupil numbers. So, there is no excuse to not make at least a modest start.”
The EPI has today set out three options for directing funding to pupils in this category. Here’s what you need to know…
Option 1: £80 million
The EPI’s first scenario would allocate funding for persistently disadvantaged pupils by adding new factors to the national funding formula.
The amounts would be calculated based on how much further behind academically persistently disadvantaged pupils are.
The funding uplifts amount to £128 for each persistently disadvantaged pupil in primary school, and £216 for each persistently disadvantaged pupil in secondary school.
Adding these factors to the national funding formula “would be a relatively low-cost option at £80 million per year – equivalent to increasing average per pupil funding by £11 per pupil overall and £17 per persistently disadvantaged pupil”.
Option 2: £200 million
In its second scenario, the EPI would fund persistent disadvantage through the pupil premium.
Again, they would calculate funding increases based on the attainment gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils and “scale the pupil premium values accordingly”.
The funding uplifts amount to £265 per persistently disadvantaged primary pupil and £217 per persistently disadvantaged secondary pupil.
This would come “at a cost of around £200 million per year”.
Option 3: £640 million
The third scenario would again fund persistent disadvantage through the pupil premium, but would also reverse the real-terms cut to the value of the fund since 2014.
This would involve uplifts in the primary pupil premium from £1,455 to £1,693 and the secondary pupil premium from £1,035 to £1,218.
The resulting increases for persistently disadvantaged pupils would be £308 in primary and £255 in secondary.
“We estimate that this would cost around £640 million per year.”
