Baroness Jones of Whitchurch – 2014 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Baroness Jones of Whitchurch on 2014-03-27.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to ensure that all maintained and academy schools in receipt of the pupil premium use the funds directly to support disadvantaged pupils.

Lord Nash

Headteachers of maintained schools and academies are expected to use their professional judgement in determining which well-evidenced interventions to invest in to raise the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils. A headteacher may decide to spend some of their pupil premium on whole school interventions, such as improving the quality of teacher feedback, as the evidence shows that this has a significant impact on the attainment of disadvantaged pupils.

While headteachers have this freedom, they are also held accountable for the impact of this additional funding in three different ways. Firstly, the performance tables set out the attainment and progress of disadvantaged pupils and the gap between them and their peers. Secondly, Ofsted inspects the achievement of all pupils in a school, and where disadvantaged pupils are making insufficient progress, inspectors are likely to grade a school as requiring improvement and will recommend that the school undertakes a pupil premium review. Thirdly, schools are required to publish online how much pupil premium funding they receive, how they have used this funding and an evaluation of the impact that it has had.