Family income data will replace free school meals eligibility as the trigger for pupil premium and other deprivation funding for schools, the government has said.
Ministers have previously said they were reviewing how the pupil premium – worth almost £3 billion annually to schools to help them address disadvantage – is allocated.
At present the pupil premium funding is paid for every child who was eligible for free school meals at any point in the previous six years.
Free school meals eligibility is also used as a metric to determine how other disadvantage funding is allocated through the national funding formula (NFF).
But the government has now quietly announced it will change this approach. Its plans were buried in a long Treasury report.
“The [DfE] will design a new model for targeting disadvantage funding by using income data to directly allocate pupil premium and NFF deprivation funding,” the document states.
“This will replace the use of free school meals claims within the last six years as the economic eligibility criteria for pupil premium and NFF deprivation funding and enable it to tilt funding towards the most entrenched disadvantage.”
Overall spend ‘to be maintained’
The DfE has been approached by Schools Week for details on how this will work, and what data the government will use to establish family income.
The revelation was made in a 299-page Treasury minutes document, in which government gives updates on how departments are delivering against recommendations made by the Parliamentary public accounts committee.
It comes after government revealed in June it was reviewing the way it allocates funding for disadvantaged pupils to schools and local authorities, to “ensure it is targeted to those who need it most”.
In the Treasury minutes, the DfE stressed it will do this “while maintaining the overall amount it spends on tackling the challenges faced by children with additional needs”.
Issues with FSM and pupil premium
Research by the Education Policy Institute (EPI) has previously highlighted issues with the use of free school meals (FSM) as a proxy for disadvantage. In March, an EPI report warned the system excludes many children living in poverty.
Responding to DfE plans to change its approach, Jon Andrews, head of analysis at EPI, said: “Eligibility for free school meals has been a long standing measure of disadvantage for schools in England, but its use is not without issues.
“Our research has shown that many families currently entitled to FSM are not registered for their entitlement. This is particularly a problem in the early years and at the beginning of primary school.”
Andrews says this has been “further complicated” by the government’s expansion of free school meals, to include all children from households eligible for universal credit, from September 2026.
Currently, only families with a pre-benefits household income below £7,400 can claim free lunches.
The Department for Education estimates more than 500,000 extra pupils will become eligible as a result of FSM extension. However, pupils who become eligible under the extension will not attract pupil premium funding.
Andrews said: “To date, there has not been a clear rationale from government as to why… The government is clear that these children are growing up in difficult circumstances. As such [they] are likely to have lower attainment and require additional support in school.
“We have ourselves argued for a greater focus on those in the deepest disadvantage. By the time they sit their GCSEs, pupils in persistent poverty are the equivalent of nearly two years behind their peers. Despite this, neither the pupil premium, nor the national funding formula target funding towards persistently disadvantaged pupils.”
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