Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Accepted
Introduce stronger mechanisms to understand how schools spend disadvantaged-focused funding effectively.
Conclusion
The Department relies on schools to spend funding in line with its intended purposes but has limited understanding of whether they do so. The Department’s policy is to allow schools and early years providers flexibility to use funding according to their local context. As such, more than 90% of the estimated £9.2 billion funding associated with disadvantage is not “ringfenced”, meaning schools can choose how they spend it. However, this also means the Department does not have a good understanding of how schools spend funding and therefore how effectively it supports the attainment of disadvantaged pupils. There is a risk that disadvantaged children may not be benefitting, with 47% of school leaders surveyed by Sutton Trust in 2024 using pupil premium to plug wider budget gaps, up from 23% in 2019. The Department does not have a systematic way to understand how pupil premium is spent, with only 80% of schools sampled in 2023 meeting the requirement to publish 2022–23 strategies setting out how they plan to use funding to improve disadvantaged children’s attainment. Also, the Department is not collecting information on whether schools are providing tutoring, now the National Tutoring Programme has ended. recommendation Whilst retaining the principle of local decision–making, the Department should introduce stronger and clearer mechanisms to understand how schools spend funding. This should include: • collecting data on where schools use disadvantaged–focused funding, including for certain interventions such as tutoring; and • reiterating the need for schools to publish up–to–date strategies for how they plan to spend pupil premium and following up non– compliance.
Government Response Summary
The government committed to exploring new digital solutions for collecting pupil premium spending data by 2027-28, with interim automation from 2025-26, and is collecting tutoring data via the school census. It also detailed existing mechanisms for monitoring schools' compliance with publishing pupil premium strategies and following up on non-compliance.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. premium grant, including potential digital solutions by Academic Year 2027-28. This could support schools’ development of effective, evidence-based pupil premium strategies and provide the department with better data on how schools allocate this funding. The department is also exploring ways to automate the current data collection and analysis process to obtain better data from schools ahead of a digital solution, from Academic Year 2025-26. Pupil premium conditions of grant and guidance for school leaders set out reporting requirements for the grant, including the requirement that schools publish an updated strategy statement by 31 December each year. Schools with more than five pupils eligible for pupil premium are required to publish a strategy statement annually on their school website, using a DfE template designed to support effective and efficient strategy development. The department currently reviews a sample of pupil premium statements to ensure schools comply with the conditions of grant and that their planned activities align with the department’s evidence-based ‘menu of approaches’. All schools that are non-compliant are contacted by the department and asked to ensure that they publish a compliant statement. Of the schools found to be non-compliant in 2024, only 4% remained non-compliant in March 2025. The National Tutoring Programme was designed as a time limited four-year programme to support pupils to catch up on lost learning due to the pandemic. The department invested £1 billion over its four-year life cycle, which ended on 31 August 2024. The department is collecting data on whether pupils are receiving tutoring through the school census in 2024-25.