This is an update to a previous blogpost.

This year, the Department for Education switched its methodology for allocating funding for the Pupil Premium.

Whereas they had historically used numbers of pupils eligible for free school meals in the previous 6 years (FSM6) from the January School Census, this year they decided to use numbers from the previous October.

As free school meal eligibility (which is based on income-related benefits such as Universal Credit) has been increasing, this has resulted in a loss of funding for schools. But how much?

In updated guidance on the effective use of the Pupil Premium, DfE suggested the size of the FSM6 group increased by 60,000 pupils between October and January.

At the end of July, DfE responded to a FOI request for the numbers of FSM6 pupils at each school based on the January 2021 School Census.

We compared these numbers to the DfE October 2020 allocations spreadsheet and found a difference of 104,000 pupils. However, we now think that FSM6 pupils who were also looked after (or who had ceased to be looked after) had been removed from the allocations spreadsheet, exaggerating the difference. These pupils are funded separately.

Now that we have access to School Census data for 2021 ourselves, let’s resolve this once and for all.

Data Used

For this exercise, we use the pupil-level School Census data from the National Pupil Database. Alongside the Census, schools return the dates between which pupils were eligible.

The January School Census contains a flag to indicate whether a pupil had been eligible for free school meals in the last six years. We use this flag in our analysis.

But for the October School Census such a flag does not exist and we have to calculate it ourselves. We do this by observing the free school meal eligibility dates for pupils. Anyone we see being eligible at any time between January 2015 and October 2020 is classified as FSM6.

We restrict our analysis to pupils on roll and remove duplicate pupils.

Results

The table below shows the results of our calculations by year group.

Overall, the size of the FSM6 group increased by 63,000 between October and January.

What we also see is that the total number of FSM6 pupils in October was 1.93 million. This compares to 1.88 million in the DfE allocations spreadsheet. We assume the difference represents the number of looked after children.

Finally, a table produced by DfE in the Pupil Premium guidance suggested that the number of FSM6 pupils in secondary schools would have decreased by 5,000 if the January School Census had been used.

I still find this a headscratcher. The table above suggests an increase of 16,000 pupils in the secondary year groups (7 to 11) and 47,000 in primary. However, we see that numbers in each cohort have fallen between January 2020 and January 2021 (e.g. comparing Year 7 in 2020 to Year 8 in 2021). Perhaps there’s an explanation in there somewhere.

So overall around 63,000 additional pupils appear to have entered the FSM6 group between October and January. In terms of financial impact to schools, any looked after children in this group would have to be discounted as they are funded separately.

In future, and to avoid this confusion, it might be an idea for DfE to publish the total number of FSM6 pupils at each school, including looked after children, when publishing its Pupil Premium allocations.

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