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Pupil Premium

Purpose

The pupil premium grant provides funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England.

The service pupil premium (SPP) provides support for children and young people of service families. It is combined into pupil premium payments to make it easier for schools to manage their spending. Pupils that the SPP intends to support are not necessarily from financially disadvantaged backgrounds.

We want to support all schools to use the wealth of evidence of ‘what works’, evaluated by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), to use this funding effectively to drive high and rising standards for disadvantaged pupils.

 

Funding criteria

Pupil premium funding is allocated to eligible schools based on the number of:

  • pupils who are recorded as eligible for free school meals, or have been recorded as eligible in the past 6 years (referred to as Ever 6 FSM)
  • children previously looked after by a local authority or other state care, including children adopted from state care or equivalent from outside England and Wales

Pupil premium is not a personal budget for individual pupils, and schools do not have to spend pupil premium so that it solely benefits pupils who meet the funding criteria. It can be used:

  • to support other pupils with identified needs, such as those who have or have had a social worker, or who act as a carer
  • for whole class interventions which will also benefit non-disadvantaged pupils

Pupil premium funding is allocated to local authorities based on the number of:

  • looked-after children, supported by the local authority
  • pupils who meet any of the eligibility criteria and who attend an independent setting, where the local authority pays full tuition fees

For pupils who are looked-after children, funding should be managed by the local authority’s virtual school head (VSH)  in consultation with the child’s school.

 

Service pupil premium

Service pupil premium is additional funding for schools with children and young people of service families.

Pupils in state-funded schools in England attract the service pupil premium grant, at the rate of:

  • £350 per eligible pupil in the 2025 to 2026 financial year
  • £360 per eligible pupil in the 2026 to 2027 financial year

Pupils are eligible if they meet any of the following criteria:

  • one of their parents is serving in the regular armed forces (including pupils with a parent who is on full commitment as part of the full-time reserve service) or is in the armed forces of another nation and is stationed in England and they have been registered as a ‘service child’ in the most recent autumn DfE school census
  • they do not currently have ‘service child’ status but they have been registered as a ‘service child’ on any DfE school census in the past 6 years
  • one of their parents died whilst serving in the armed forces and the pupil receives a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the War Pensions Scheme

This funding is primarily to enable schools to offer pastoral support and help mitigate the negative impact of family mobility or parental deployment. It can also be used to help improve the academic progress of eligible pupils if the school deems this to be a priority.

*All information above taken from GOV.UK, please visit https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium/pupil-premium for more information.

 

Please visit Free school meals and other benefits | Hertfordshire County Council to register and check eligibility for free school meals.

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