Disadvantaged children still performing less well than peers despite £60 billion investment to support all children in education

The National Audit Office (NAO) recently released its report: ‘Improving educational outcomes for disadvantaged children’, examining the Department for Education’s (DfE) funding to support the attainment of disadvantaged children in English educational settings from early years to the end of Key Stage 4 (end of compulsory schooling).

NAO said the department has a strategic priority to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children. It has introduced a range of interventions, alongside its funding to support all children, specifically to improve the attainment of disadvantaged children. The report examines if the DfE is achieving value for money in its funding.

It assesses:

–  Whether DfE has a coherent approach to support the attainment of disadvantaged children, and its progress against its objectives

–  How DfE understands the attainment of children and how it evaluates what works to effectively allocate resources

– The accountability arrangements and support DfE provides schools and early years providers to ensure value for money

NAO reported that each year, DfE spends around £60 billion to support all children across schools and early years settings. For 2023-2024, this included an estimated £9.2 billion focused on supporting disadvantaged children and narrowing the attainment gap between them and their peers, with half of this comprising disadvantage elements of its core funding for schools.

Despite this investment, NAO stated disadvantaged children performed less well than their peers across all areas and school phases in 2022/23. The gap in children’s attainment had been narrowing before the COVID-19 pandemic, which then had a detrimental impact. The gap continues to widen for Key Stage 4, which is when children leave school, and, while the attainment gap for those finishing primary school narrowed slightly in the past year, it remains wider than it was a decade ago.

NAO said that DfE has evidence to support some of its interventions and uses this to help schools and early years providers to make decisions. However, it does not yet understand the outcomes resulting from a significant proportion of its expenditure on disadvantaged children. It also does not have a fully integrated view of its interventions, or milestones to assess progress and when more may need to be done.

This, and the lack of sustained progress reducing the disadvantage attainment gap since 2010/11, means that DfE cannot demonstrate it is achieving value for money, according to NAO. To make progress, and secure value for money, it should build more evidence of what works, look strategically across its interventions and how it allocates its funding, and work effectively across government to address the wider factors to make progress on this complex issue.

Commenting on the report, Professor Becky Francis, CEO of the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF), said: “The Pupil Premium remains the most powerful tool schools have at their disposal to support pupils facing socio-economic disadvantage. Over the past decade, there is no doubt that it has enabled schools to sharpen their focus and increase their efforts on supporting this group of pupils.

 “That being said, we know that many schools are facing financial pressures. And the NAO report highlights how the pupil premium has fallen in real terms value over the last few years, while more and more pupils have become eligible.

 “The socio-economic attainment gap remains stubbornly wide, so the mission of the Pupil Premium is more important than ever. It is right that we focus on making sure this crucial resource has the biggest possible impact.

 “Our resources provide support to schools to help them make evidence-informed decisions about their spending, whether that’s on targeted interventions, supporting high quality teaching, or implementing strategies to support behaviour or attendance.”