Pupil Premium to be £430 pa

[onimolap]

BBC reporting this, though full details won't be announced until Monday. Cost for first year c.£625m (compare LibDem "pledge" of £2+b by 2014/15).

I don't know enough about other changes to school budgets, but do any MNers know if this amount per pupil is likely to make much difference?

From the NUT:

George Osborne sought to argue that the Pupil Premium represents additional funding for education. Michael Gove has, however, since admitted that the Pupil Premium is not new money and that many schools will lose out in funding terms as a result of its introduction.

What the Government has done is to freeze funding per pupil at its current cash level for the next four years. All other additional money to offset real terms cuts in school funding has been dressed up as the Pupil Premium.

Before the election, the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats promised that the Pupil Premium would be additional money to boost schools? funding. Instead, the Government is simply using the money which is needed to stop schools? funding being cut in real terms ? and it is not even achieving that.

Michael Gove has admitted that the Pupil Premium will not protect schools from real terms cuts in funding. Pupil Premium funding will not be distributed evenly between LAs. Those which currently receive lower overall funding per pupil will receive higher levels of Pupil Premium funding. This will create winners and losers among both LAs and schools.

According to the independent Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS), overall funding for schools, even including the Pupil Premium, will be cut in real terms by 0.6% a year because of the increase in pupil numbers. The IFS estimates that, for 60% of primary students and 87% of secondary students, their school's real funding will fall.

tethers: isn't that from the "Where the axe will fall" briefing paper from earlier in the autumn?

With the actual figures beginning to emerge, how is it looking? Not just the overall cuts to the total schools' budget, but if it is yet clearer who will be the winners/losers, and whether the per pupil amount will really make a difference re the stated aim of making "premium" pupils more attractive to schools. Will it add up to enough to buy worthwhile additional services?

Just seen the Beeb news: Govt are saying schools' budget will rise in real terms (result of pay freeze?). Redistribution within that budget not clear - apparently there's an attempt to end post-code lottery: all disadvantaged pupils to receive the same, which could mean cuts in some tough areas (eg Tower Hamlets) which receive more additional funding than other deprived areas.

What does anyone else make of this?

The Deputy Head of the school where I work (an outstanding comp in a small Home Counties town) told me that schools will need to have at least 20% of pupils in receipt of the pupil premium before they break even.

Other schools are facing cuts in real terms, ecspecially if they have large sixth forms. If they are "sport hubs", they also face losing funding for extra-curricular sport.

They are also losing the ring-fencing for catch-up reading schemes so that instead of extra money being found it will have to come out of the school budget (which is being cut in real terms) and left to the discretion of the head - with the best will in the world with everything being cut it's unlikely that schemes such as this will survive! It's bloody disgraceful!

At a very basic level secondary schools are losing all their targeted funding and for a lot of schools in disadvantaged areas there will be a loss of around £2k per pupil who receives free school meals.

One of the schools that DH works with had £750,000 a year in targeted funding. With 250 children eligible for the pupil premium they will have a loss of around £640,000 which will result in frontline service cuts, most likely in staffing numbers.

It's going to make a huge difference for an awful lot of schools.

£430 is £11 per week [before admin costs taken out of that cash] per child. That is not enough for 'one to one tuition' now is it.

It is is a con, especially with just about every other service being taken away, disbanded, or being made to pay for out of individual school budgets.

Funny, how they quickly announced this after another student protest about cuts and fees.