An axed £55 million grant aimed at Year 7 pupils who start secondary school behind their peers will not be redirected via the national funding formula for schools, the Department for Education has admitted.

The decision has been criticised as “short-sighted” and “giving out on one hand and taking away with the other” by headteachers and union officials.

When the DfE made the surprise decision to “discontinue” the grant last week, it implied that the money was being channelled through the national formula instead.

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It said the decision to discontinue the Year 7 catch-up funding was “as a result” of the introduction of the funding formula, which, it said, “provides for schools to attract low prior attainment funding for pupils in Year 7 to 11 with lower attainment who need support to catch up”.

This led to confusion over whether or not the money was being replaced.

Catch-up funding for Year 7 cut

This confusion was expressed during a webinar yesterday organised by the NAHT headteachers’ union, at which funding specialist Julie Cordiner said: “Although the government has said it will move that [Year 7 catch-up money] into the NFF and the NFF will cover it…there isn’t actually a mechanism within the NFF that will target those funds at Year 7 children, so there’s a risk that it’ll come out of the money that’s been announced as new money.”

Adding to the confusion, the “low prior attainment” money, for pupils across five year groups who were behind their peers before starting secondary school, is not new; it has been available since the introduction of the national funding formula in 2018.

Now, the DfE has confirmed to Tes that there will be no changes to the formula for 2020-21, meaning the £55 million will not be added to it.

Asked whether funding formula allocations would stay the same despite the lost Year 7 catch-up cash, a DfE spokesperson said: “For 2020-21, the National Funding Formula (NFF) is already set and published (including the amount allocated through LPA) and schools are indeed currently using their core budgets set as a result of the formula.”

It comes after the announcement of a £1 billion fund to help pupils catch up on lost learning as a result of the coronavirus pandemic.

Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the NEU teaching union, said cutting the Year 7 catch-up grant after announcing the £1 billion fund amounted to “giving out on one hand and taking away with the other”.

The Year 7 literacy and numeracy catch-up premium was paid as a grant to schools, and was aimed at students who required extra support, such as those who did not reach the expected standard in key stage 2 tests.

Jules White, headteacher at Tanbridge House School in West Sussex, criticised the move to cut the funds. He said: “Withdrawing £55 million from those students who are already starting secondary far behind their peers is short-sighted.”

Despite suggesting that the cut was a natural consequence of the NFF, the DfE admitted that schools were not told about the change until 19 June at the earliest - after many had already submitted their 2020-21 budgets.

This was problematic for schools, according to Julia Harnden, funding specialist at the Association of School and College Leaders. 

She said: “The withdrawal of Year 7 catch-up funding has come as a surprise to schools.

“As part of the additional £7.1 billion going into schools over the next three years, more money has gone into the NFF, but schools had no reason to expect that they wouldn’t continue to receive Year 7 catch-up funding.

“This money and low prior attainment funding have been allocated alongside each other for the last few years and schools will have planned their budgets accordingly, targeting staff and resources to support pupils who need it.”

A DfE spokesperson said: “The National Funding Formula (NFF) contains a Low Prior Attainment (LPA) factor, which is allocated on a similar basis to the Year 7 catch-up premium, but provides funding for all five years that a pupil is in secondary school.

“This is in addition to our £1 billion catch-up package to support pupils who may have fallen behind as a result of coronavirus and on top of the three-year settlement announced last year for schools, which increased the core schools budget by £2.6 billion in 2020-21, rising to a £7.1 billion increase by 2022-23, compared to 2019-20.”