The Pupil Premium

[LadyBlaBlah]

This seems to be the flagship policy for the demonstration of how fair the new education system is to be.

I feel, however, that this is a very far reaching claim. Firstly, this is coming from a government who says that throwing money at public services is not the best way to emit change.

But more importantly, the funding for this is simply coming from slashes made in other areas of education, it does not go directly to the pupil who has attracted the funding and thus the school is not required to spend the funding in any specific way to reduce the attainment gap - it seems the school can use the money in any way they see fit, not necessarily to reduce the attainment gap.

The IFS report says: "This policy will not, on its own, abolish the attainment gap, which is still likely to remain large afterwards, still likely to lead to inequalities in later life outcomes and still likely to be passed down through the generations."

"In order to significantly narrow the achievement gap, interventions must be wider than changes in schools policy."

The condem government are still surprising me with their overwhelming arrogance and stupidity. Maybe I am missing something, but the pupil premium policy seems to be misleading at best, a total con at worst.

Lady Blahblah,

First, this policy is trying to 'target' money rather than 'throw' money at a very difficult problem.

If you throw public money at a problem - it's expensive and much of the money seems to end up with people who aren't in the most need.

The pupil premium is as much about providing an 'incentive' for good schools to actively recruit poorer pupils, as it is targeting money directly at them.

The last government tried to get more poorer kids into good schools by tightening admissions rules - that didn't work out so well. They also provided extra funding for the less advantaged kids - but left the LEA's to distribute it. Again not as successful as they hoped.

Do I think the PP will work? I'm pretty cynical - and as your IFS quote states - a lot more needs to be done if we want a more equal education system.

It remains to be seen whether this will actually be additional funding. The schools I work for are convinced it won't be. If that is the case it won't be spent on anything at all as schools will be struggling just to find pay increments for teaching and admin stuff with a 0.1% uplift in budgets.

The pupil premium is unlikely to 'just' cover the poorest pupils - it will also be used for SEN pupils that do not have a full statement. Which is most of them! Even dc that are working 4-5 years behind their peer group due to LD's, like my DD, do not have a full statement, they are only on SA or SA+ (School Action or School Action Plus). So it's just going to take funding from SEN pupils and redirect it.

This is already happening under a different name in my LEA. It's awful for SEN dc. Everything is at the HT's discretion, and if you are unlucky enough to have an SEN dc that ends up in a school where the HT is more concerned with the appearance of the school to MC parents than SEN dc that don't even have to be PUT in for SATS, so don't necessarily show on league tables, then your dc is screwed.

DD's primary HT decided that using the SEN portion of his budget to repave the school playground and provide sailshades for the playground was more important than reading recovery schemes or additional numeracy support for a 10-11yo that was still working on NC lvl 1.

sorry meant teaching and admin staff!

I'm hoping that the PP will raise the money going to schools in Cornwall and Devon which have been chronically underfunded by Labour as they didn't 'get' rural areas or their problems, and because they weren't in a Labour heartland.

But scaryteacher - surely they should raise funding in those areas without cutting funding to larger schools in the SE? My DS's primary school currently has 450 pupils, is being made by the LEA to expand to a 3-form entry every year, desite no more land to put extra classrooms on (and no spare classrooms), in just 6 years time the school will have 630 pupils. 6 years ago when my eldest child joined the school in Y2, the school had 315 pupils. The school is now using all their SN budget on building 'upwards' and shoring up the foundations in order to do so. No reading recovery schemes, no numeracy support schemes, no TA's unless child is on a full statement.

Loudlass - the UK is currently spending above the OECD average per child on education.

Labour dramatically increased education spend - but this was not done evenly, even across areas with similar levels of parental income.

If the Coalition evens this out a bit - is that not fair?

Added to that there has been a small baby boom - working it's way through primary schools at the moment. The government is not increasing total education spend to reflect this rise in pupils.

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.

From the Guardian on Tuesday

"The UK spends £54,000 per student, while Germany and Hungary achieve a similar performance for £40,000 and £28,000, the study found. Only seven other OECD countries spend more per student than the UK."

Jackstar - thats from spending on private education. Very poor value on a national scale.

The average spend per state pupil is now £6k pa. That means 11 years of compulsory education is £66k per pupil

£66k would buy just over two years at Eton. In this context UK state schools give excellent value for money.

Two quotations from the Guardian article possibly give a clue as to why UK education isn't delivering as it should:

^The UK spends an average sum on secondary school teachers, but our teachers work longer hours than the average across the OECD.

The UK? is one of only a few countries where richer pupils have more teachers than poorer ones.^

A headteacher of an outstanding comprehensive told me that schools will need 20% of their pupils eligible for the pupil premium just to recoup losses from other cuts.

Daphne - Personally I don't think comparing state and private spend per pupil is that useful.

But - during their time in power Labour significantly increased education spend and by 2010/11 the average state school spend per pupil is forecast to be about £6,600 per year. Compared to the average private school fees of an estimated £8,500 per year - I'd say the state sector is the one not delivering good value for money.

For example - A grades at A level between 1997-2007 - the gap between independent and maintained sector pupils rose to 23.4 percentage points ? a rise of almost 50 per cent in the 10-year period.

There's obviously a lot more to it - but 'value for money' wise the independent sector easily wins in terms of delivering highly educated people to the UK's workforce and society in general.

There was another thread about this recently.

The pupil premium will initially be set at £430 per pupil.

Jack, I don't know where you get the figure of £8,500 from, but Gabbitas quote the average termly fees for independent day schools as £3360 to £5390.

You know as well as I do that independent schools don't have to be inclusive, nor do they have to follow the national curriculum.

Quoting the number of A grades at A level is meaningless, as many independent schools don't accept pupils whom they consider will not do well at A level. There are, in any case (as you quite rightly say), other factors involved too.

I'm not claiming that independent schools don't do a good job, nor that state schools couldn't do better. However, without the hardcore of disruptive, disaffected pupils which state schools have to take and more money to spend on smaller classes, independents damn well should do a better job.

I don't believe the state system needs any more structural change. However, I do think the curriculum and qualifications need a thorough evaluation by independent and non-partisan professionals.

In any case, this thread is about the pupil premium, which is too small to be effective and will, in most cases, not even compensate schools for other cuts.

Daphne - you were the one who raised private school fees first - as I said comparisons are pretty meaningless.

I was pointing out that on an international comparison the UK spend on state education is about equal to higher performing countries.

The £8,500 comes from an IFS report published in May - looking at how well the last government did in trying to meet it's 'target' of spending an equal amount per pupil as was spent in private schools.

The problem being the increased state spend pushed up teacher salaries - which in turn pushed up private schools fees. The result was the private schools seemed to have 'upped their game' to justify their fees, and the attainment gap appeared to widen.

If there's any relevance to the OP it's that 'market forces' can be very powerful - even in education.