Following recent work that Schools North East has done lobbying for changes to Pupil Premium funding allocations, the region’s Labour MPs have collectively called on the Secretary of State for Education to make immediate changes in how this vital additional funding is made.

Schools North East recently highlighted that the new allocation system could have disastrous consequences for North-East schools.  Potential losses to the region have been estimated in the range of £5.16 million up to £7.26 million. Previously, Schools North East, the North East Child Poverty Commission and Children North East wrote to Gavin Williamson calling on him to make changes in the pupil premium funding calculations. They are being calculated from October 2020 census data rather than January 2021 figures which have seen significant changes in NE students’ circumstances in this span of time.

Schools North East found that newly-available data showed that there had been an increase of 5,400 pupils across the region who received free school meals from October 2020 up to January 2021. The devastating impact that COVID-19 has had on peoples’ circumstances must be properly understood and supported by Gavin Williamson and the Government.

This issue has now been picked up by the North East’s Labour MPs who have written to the Secretary of State calling the decision for this change a “deliberate attempt to deprive schools of money they need to give our young people the best possible start in life” as well as a display of “incompetence.” The letter also alleges that this has been done to help fund a large portion of the National Tutoring Programme costs- something which the National Auditing Office found was insufficient for those who were disadvantaged. The NE as a region is undersubscribed to the NTP, so any ‘losses’ due to the changes in the census date will be a ‘double whammy’ for NE schools who will be less likely to benefit from support provided through the NTP. 

This issue also has national significance with Schools Week finding that the loss for schools across the country was estimated to be £180 million as a study found that 300,000 more pupils became eligible for free school meals in the first 7 months of COVID.

Schools North East and partners will continue to call for a rethink from the Secretary of State.  Chris Zarraga, Director of Schools North East, said:  “This situation must be rectified as soon as possible. As schools attempt to move beyond covid they desperately require adequate financial support.  The NE will see significant covid-related increases in poverty, including in schools not located in areas of high deprivation.  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’ quickly.”