Select committee: Education Committee
Recommendation 8
Second Report - Educational poverty: how children in residential care have been let down and what to do about it
Published 8 Jul 2022
Paragraph 31
Addressed to Department for Education
Education Committee Children's Homes All items in this report Report on parliament.uk ↗ Inquiry on parliament.uk ↗
Recommendation (the committee's words)
Local authorities must annually report to Ofsted, accounting for how every penny of their Pupil Premium Plus grant is being spent. The Department must strengthen its guidance on the grant, stipulating that all funding must be allocated via the Virtual School Head, and the Virtual School Head be awarded powers to sign off on the use of the grant. Local authorities must evidence that the grant is being spent on specific educational interventions and not being used to plug funding gaps elsewhere. Ofsted’s inspections of local authority children’s services must scrutinise the measurable impact Pupil Premium Plus is having on progress and outcomes for looked-after children. Where local authorities are not spending Pupil Premium Plus allocations within the terms of grant, or where it is having insufficient impact on outcomes, local authorities should face clear consequences via capped Ofsted judgements.
From: Education Committee, Second Report - Educational poverty: how children in residential care have been let down and what to do about it (HC 57), paragraph 31, 8 July 2022
Government response
The government responded to the whole report on 10 November 2022 (deadline 8 September 2022).
Summary written by Accountability Index from the government's response. It is not the government's own words.The government says it "fully agrees with the core message" that looked-after children are educationally disadvantaged and accepts the wide majority of recommendations fully or in part, with other recommendations handled through existing or planned reforms.
- On data, it says it "will publish the recommended breakdowns in the 2023 releases", in conjunction with its confidentiality policy, which "may result in us needing to suppress low numbers".
- On putting the extended Virtual School Head role on a statutory footing, it says longer-term plans, including whether to do so, "are under active consideration", informed by an independent evaluation.
- On a maximum 20-day timeframe for Schools Adjudicator decisions, it says this "would be unlikely to improve the speed of decisions", and it has "no plans" to extend Ofsted's remit to assess admissions.
- It is committed to a new school-movement framework and local authority backstop power, with a formal public consultation "in due course" and primary legislation "when an appropriate legislative opportunity arises".