North East charities write to the Secretary of State for Education about pupil premium
Regional organisations Schools North East, the North East Child Poverty Commission and Children North East have questioned the Government’s commitment to putting children and young people at the heart of the post-Covid recovery after new free school meal figures confirmed a multimillion-pound funding loss for the region’s schools.
In March, the three organisations wrote jointly to the Secretary of State for Education, highlighting the potential impact an ‘administrative’ change to the way in which pupil premium funding is allocated would have for schools in the North East.
The calculation for pupil premium has been changed by the Government so that it will now be based on the number of pupils at each school eligible for free school meals (FSM) in October, rather than January, as has previously been the case.
New figures published by the Department for Education confirm that there was an increase of 5,700 pupils in receipt of FSM across the North East between the school census of October 2020 and that of January 2021. This means that schools in the region are facing a loss of up to £7.66 million in pupil premium funding as a result of the Government’s change.
This week, we wrote again to the Education Secretary, urging him to reverse this decision, now that the scale of the funding loss for schools and pupils in the region is clear. You can read the letter here.
The letter has received media attention, including being featured on the front page of the Northern Echo.
Schools North East Director, Chris Zarraga, said: ‘The North East is seeing significant Covid-related increases in poverty, including in schools not located in areas of high deprivation, highlighted by the increase in the number of students eligible for pupil premium. School budgets are already suffering due to continuing outgoing costs of Covid safety measures, and the decision to use the October 2020 census data will have a serious detrimental impact on our students who have already suffered significant disruption over the last year. Any short-term savings made by using the October census will be more than offset by the longer-term economic losses to the region of not properly supporting our students to ‘recover’.’