Plymouth City Council has to find an additional £500k to help support the City’s most vulnerable children, due to the Government relying on outdated figures to calculate the local funding allocation.
Publicly-funded schools in England get extra funding from the Government to help them improve the attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.
The pupil premium grant supports children, such as those from low-income families and have been entitled to free school meals, children of service personals and those who are looked after.
However, in the latest round of funding, the Government used old data-sets to calculate the amount that Plymouth should receive. The allocation ignores the additional applications that have been received during the pandemic. As a result, the City has to find in excess of £500k to cover the gap.
In a letter to Gavin Williamson MP, Cllr Jon Taylor the Cabinet Member for Education, Skills and Transformation for Plymouth City Council, said: “In an average year Plymouth would normally have approved approximately 1500 new applications for free school meals. However this year, we have seen this number rise to over 2000. It is clear that many more families in our City are struggling to make ends meet.
“In Plymouth, we have seen over 400 additional applications for pupil premium. However, as the Government based it’s calculation on outdated school data, there is a huge gap in the funding allocation. The result is that the Plymouth will lose in excess of £500k. This is money that could have been spent on supporting Plymouth children in the classroom with additional resources and extra teaching assistants.
“We cannot simply stand by and let this go unchallenged - we would urge the Government to reconsider their decision and use the most up to date datasets to calculate pupil premium eligibility. In whatever decision the Ministers are making at these transitional times, the Government must make sure that our children and their needs are central to our national recovery plans.”