Schools will have to wait until May to find out their pupil premium funding allocations for the 2024-25 financial year, the Department for Education has said.
In an update published online today, the department said it had been “made aware of a problem with its identification of reception aged pupils who qualify for pupil premium”.
“This means it needs more time to ensure that the 2024 to 2025 pupil premium allocations are accurate and we will now publish the initial allocations, the week commencing Monday May 6.”
The page previously stated that the grant allocations would be published “in March 2024”, which ends in five days.
Pupil premium funding is worth between £1,035 and £2,530 per pupil, and is paid to schools for children who have been eligible for free school meals at any point in the past six years, as well as looked-after and previously-looked-after children.
The grant will be worth £2.9 billion to schools in 2024-25.
The DfE today insisted that the delay to published allocations would “not impact the timeline for payments in July 2024”.
“We hope that this does not cause any disruption to your planning for the academic year.”
Final allocations for the current financial year, which ends next week, will be published “by the end of March 2024 as planned”.
Schools have been told to “contact the customer help centre if you have any questions”.
Schools Week has approached DfE for more information on what the problem is.
