More students will be eligible for the pupil premium in areas where the government’s Universal Credit policy was first rolled out, new research shows.
Pupil premium funding was first introduced by the coalition government to give state schools extra money to help disadvantaged pupils achieve.
It is worth £1,320 for primary and £935 for secondary pupils who have been registered as eligible for free school meals during the past six years. This rises to £2,300 for those who have been in care.
Universal Credit replaces six means-tested benefits for working-age adults.
When Universal Credit was first piloted, any claimants with children were automatically deemed eligible for free school meals.
However, the criteria for awarding free meals was changed in April so that only households with net incomes (i.e., excluding benefits) of £7,400 or under are eligible.
To avoid pupils missing out on free school meals as a result of the changes, the DfE chose to “protect” the children of existing claimants, even if they no longer meet the eligibility criteria.
‘More pupils eligible for pupil premium cash’
Education Datalab statistician Dave Thomson said areas where the Universal Credit system was first trialled would, therefore, be more likely to get funding for disadvantaged pupils in the immediate future.
“It appears that areas that were in the first waves of full Universal Credit rollout will have more pupils eligible for the pupil premium than they otherwise would have done,” he said in a blog post.
“Compared to areas unaffected by Universal Credit until 2018, free school meals eligibility in the pilot areas initially fell fractionally and then increased slightly after the spring school census 2015. By summer 2017, the [free school meals] eligibility rate had increased by almost 0.5 percentage points compared to spring 2015.”
He added: “The early introduction of Universal Credit tends to have increased free school meals eligibility in affected areas. We cannot be absolutely certain, but there are probably more eligible pupils than there otherwise would have been in these areas.”
As well as receiving more funding for disadvantage, he said these areas were also likely to be “winners for the medium term” because “attainment statistics for the disadvantaged group are likely to be boosted by the inclusion of less-disadvantaged pupils”.
Implementation of the full Universal Credit service began in November 2015 and had reached 815,000 claimants as of March. The government plans to expand this to 8.5 million people by 2024-25.
