Miami Mortgage News

25 low-cost ways to spend pupil premium and maximise impact as austerity bites

Adopting some of these high-impact, low-cost strategies will maintain the momentum of school improvement during the funding squeeze and make a big difference where it matters most, writes one leading educationistNearly a third of schools are using pupil premium to plug the holes in their budget this year, according to the Sutton Trust annual survey of teachers, published on 12 April.In 32 per cent of primary schools and 27 per cent of secondary schools the reduction in the school’s funding is being mitigated by spending some of the pupil premium on items that would previously have been paid for through the main budget.This is bad news for the disadvantaged pupils in those schools, who are not benefitting from the additional spending. It is bad news for schools, too.Taking a gamblePupil premium is not subject to detailed government prescription, as occurs in so many other areas of school life. Schools get the additional funding and are held to account for the impact they make on the progress and attainment of disadvantaged pupils.This intelligent form of accountability gives school leaders and governing bodies a large amount of autonomy in the way the money is spent.So bad news story number one is that schools are playing a very risky game in allocating pupil premium money to areas that will not affect how well their disadvantaged children do. Impact may well be reduced and accountability will tell the story very publicly.