Pupil premium should be weighted so that “persistently” disadvantaged students who “receive no extra focus” attract greater funding, in order to help close the widening gap between the attainment of poorer pupils and their peers, a think tank has said.
The call from the Education Policy Institute (EPI) comes after it published fresh analysis showing that in 2021, the key stage 4 “disadvantage gap” between poorer students and others increased by the largest annual amount since comparable statistics have been available over the past decade.
And it found that the GCSE gap for pupils who are in poverty for at least 80 per cent of their time in school also widened.
The EPI said the data shows higher levels of funding for disadvantaged pupil are needed, and called for cash to be “weighted more heavily” towards persistently disadvantaged pupils.
The report also recommends the introduction of a student premium based on previous free school meal status for A-level students.
And the report says that the Department for Education (DfE) should ensure that disadvantaged learners can be easily identified by schools, colleges and researchers, and adds that this can be derived from the National Pupil Database.
The report looks at results in 2021, when GCSE and A-Level qualifications were teacher assessed, and found that the “headline GCSE disadvantage gap” widened by 0.1 grades (or 8 per cent), with disadvantaged pupils about 1.34 grades behind their peers across GCSE English and maths.
It said this marked the largest annual increase in the disadvantage gap since 2011, while the disadvantage gap for persistently disadvantaged pupils also widened by 0.1 grades.
Across 16-19 qualifications, the report says the gap was 0.4 grades wider across students’ best three qualifications in 2021 when judged against the pre-pandemic period, while students from a disadvantaged background were an average of 3.1 grades behind their non-disadvantaged peers, compared to 2.7 in 2019.
The findings chime with previous data, with the DfE’s 2022 GCSE data showing the disadvantage gap to be the widest in 10 years.
David Laws, executive chairman at EPI, said the research revealed “a very troubling picture”.
“This highlights that there is much more the government needs to do to support schools in reducing learning losses, particularly schools in poorer areas and those with large numbers of disadvantaged students,” he said.
Julie McCulloch, director of policy at the Association of School and College Leaders, said the report highlighted “the deep-rooted inequalities within the English education system and our society as a whole”.
“We echo the calls for increased funding for disadvantaged students. The pupil premium should be reformed to include 16- to 19-year-olds and be weighted in favour of those in persistent poverty,” she said.
At the moment, schools are allocated pupil premium cash based on the number of pupils on their roll who are eligible for free school meals, or have been eligible in the past six years, as well as pupils who have been adopted from care or have left care.
The funding formula for those aged 16-19 is allocated in a different way, based on various measures of disadvantage.
Shadow schools minister Stephen Morgan described the widening of the attainment gap as “scandalous”, and added that a Labour government would deliver a National Excellence Programme to drive up standards in all state schools, “paid for by ending tax breaks for private schools”.
The DfE was contacted for comment.
