The pupil premium is intended to help disadvantaged children but is it the best strategy for raising a achievement and helping to level the funding playing field? School leaders share their views.

No such thing as a free lunch?

Narrow scope?

Working in an area of high social depravation, the pupil premium should provide us with additional revenue. But we have a high level of students with special educational needs and with English as an additional language, not all on free school meals. If free school meals (FSM) is used as the deprivation indicator then we would not get funding for all of them. Yet it is those students who need more money spent on them for things such as one-to-one support.

Michelle Davis
Head of Support Services, Thistley Hough High School, Stoke-on-Trent

Test of freedoms

Nobody can argue with the principles behind the pupil premium but its implementation will be problematic. To target the money appropriately would require a lengthy and complex process, which will not happen. FSM is a simple criterion, but it’s also too simplistic.

It will be a test of the government’s aim for school freedom from bureaucratic central control. The big question is how exactly they will give us autonomy over the use of the premium while creating an intelligent accountability strategy to measure its impact.

Jonathan Fawcett
Headteacher, Swanwick Hall School, Derbyshire

Lump sum better

Anything that helps us to deal with narrowing the gap between students so that all can achieve their potential is to be welcomed. The pupil premium follows other initiatives that started back in the 70s – education priority areas, then education action zones and most recently one-to-one sessions.

If the government believes that schools should have the autonomy and authority to make important decisions then it would be best to give the pupil premium in a lump sum to schools. They can then work out how best to apply the funds so that the maximum number of students benefit.

Irene Bishop
Headteacher of Saviour’s and St Olave’s School, London

Premium bite?

The pupil premium is, at least, ideologically sound: funding equitably distributed to deprived pupils in wards across the country. More helpfully, because it is not ring-fenced, schools in differing circumstances in different regions will have the autonomy to spend it wisely. What is most disappointing is that the premium will lack the bite it might otherwise have had (through its ‘additionality’) against a background of cuts elsewhere.

Using FSM eligibility as an indicator should only be seen as a starting point in 2011-12. Further refinement of this indicator is imperative to ensure that all deprived pupils, including those who deserve but do not take up FSM (anybody else been trying to convince parents to claim their entitlement?) benefit from the premium.

Mat Hunter
Senior Vice-Principal, Banbury School, Oxfordshire

FSM: best criterion?

The aim is for the pupil premium to have a clear and measurable impact on the attainment of relevant pupils. That effectively means providing them with additional contact time so extra staff will be required. If free school meals are the basis of the funding, those schools with a lot of students falling into the category would, you hope, receive sufficient funding.

Our FSM numbers are low but that doesn’t mean that we don’t have students who need extra support. Our area of rural north Wiltshire has pockets of deprivation and we know that some of our students are really in need and do benefit from additional support. As a school we have a policy of providing it.

If other funding is being cut and if we do not receive sufficient pupil premium to bridge the gap, our students could end up being disadvantaged simply because of the low number in receipt of FSM.

Jane Nicholls
Business Manager, Malmesbury School, Wiltshire

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