North East becomes region with highest proportion of Pupil Premium eligible pupils
The North East has overtaken London as the region with the highest proportion of pupils eligible for Pupil Premium.
The numbers in our region have seen a slight decrease, but less significant compared to the national average. The overall pupil population in the North East is growing at the slowest rate of all English regions.
The data comes from the DfE’s guidance on PP allocations and conditions of grant 2016 to 2017. Other key findings are listed below:
- 64% of pupils in England (1,913,326) will be eligible for Deprivation Pupil Premium for the upcoming academic year – this represents 25.05% of all primary pupils and 29.18% of secondary pupils
- When other forms of Pupil Premium are taken into account – Service Child Pupil Premium, Post-LAC (Looked-after children) and Pupil Premium Plus for Looked After Children – this number rises to 2,078,975 or 28.95% of all pupils in England
- The proportion of pupils eligible for Pupil Premium has decreased since last year – down 0.31% from 29.26%
- There are 338,469 pupils on the roll in the North East for the next academic year – an increase of 3,075 or 0.92% – this is the smallest percentage increase of all the English regions and compares to a national increase of 1.24%
- Of these, 35.47% (120,066) are eligible for Pupil Premium – this is the highest proportion of any English region – followed by London with 34.67%
- This is a slight decrease of 0.03% compared to the last academic year, when 35.50% of North East pupils were PP-eligible, but larger decreases in all other regions (except the South West which saw a rise) mean that the North East has now overtaken London as the region with the highest proportion of PP-eligible pupils (last year London had the highest proportion at 35.76%)
- The North East local authority with the highest proportion of PP-eligible pupils is Middlesbrough, with 47.20% eligible – this is the ninth highest of all local authorities in England, and third highest when inner London LAs are excluded, after Manchester (50.04%) and Knowsley in Merseyside (48.07%)
- The North East local authority with the lowest proportion of PP-eligible pupils is Northumberland, with 27.21% eligible – it is the only North East local authority with a smaller proportion of PP-eligible pupils than England as a whole
- North East schools will be allocated a total of £140,921,920 in Pupil Premium