Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 18
18
Accepted
Department lacks systemic understanding of how schools spend unringfenced disadvantage funding.
Conclusion
The Department’s policy is to allow schools and other providers autonomy and flexibility to support disadvantaged children in a way that suits local circumstances and their pupils’ needs. More than 90% of the estimated £9.2 billion funding associated with disadvantage is not “ringfenced”. Schools can choose how to spend this money which may be on wider priorities or teachers’ pay. They need not spend it in a way that benefits disadvantaged pupils.57 However, the Department does not have a good understanding of how schools spend most disadvantage related funding, or a systemic way to understand, for example, how schools spend pupil premium.58
Government Response Summary
The department is reviewing options to improve reporting arrangements for the pupil premium grant, including potential digital solutions by Academic Year 2027-28, and is exploring ways to automate the current data collection and analysis process from Academic Year 2025-26.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
4.1 The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation. Target Implementation date: December 2027 4.2 The department is reviewing options to improve reporting arrangements for the pupil 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. 4.3 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. 4.4 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. 4.5 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.