'Cuts for some' in pupil premium

Education Secretary Michael Gove has admitted that the Government's "pupil premium" would lead to funding cuts for some schools.

The 2.5bn pupil premium – a key pledge of the Liberal Democrats’ election manifesto – will increase the budgets of schools with a higher proportion of poorer children.

But Mr Gove told BBC1’s Politics Show this would mean some schools “will have less”, as funding for the premium will be taken from within the education budget.

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Shadow Education Secretary Andy Burnham condemned the pupil premium as a “con” and said Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg had been “sold a pup” by the Conservatives.

Mr Gove said: “I think there will be some schools who will have less funding. At the moment we’re consulting on how the pupil premium, which is the additional 2.5bn being made available to the poorest students, will be allocated.

“But it depends precisely on whether or not we allow the pupil premium to go to slightly more children or we target it very narrowly on the very poorest.

“Depending on that, you can then make a calculation about which schools will find that they’re actually losing funding and which schools will find that they’re gaining funding.”

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He added: “It’s a very tight settlement and that does mean, and I won’t run away from it, that there will be some schools that will have less.”

David Cameron pledged in June that the pupil premium would be funded from other areas of Whitehall.

He told the Commons: “We will take money from outside the education budget to ensure that the pupil premium is well funded.”

But Mr Gove admitted yesterday: “Some of it comes from within the education budget.”

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He said: “Quite a bit of it comes from welfare spending,” adding: “We’ve ensured that there is money that comes from welfare which is being spent on pupil premium and without the welfare cuts, we wouldn’t be in the position to have a real terms increase in school spending.”

Chancellor George Osborne announced on Wednesday that the schools budget will increase from 35bn to 39bn over the next four years – a 0.1 per cent increase in real terms.

But he confirmed that the Education Maintenance Allowance (EMA) – handed to disadvantaged 16 to 19-year-olds to encourage them to continue their schooling – has been scrapped, while capital spending has been slashed by 60 per cent in real terms.

The Department for Education (DfE) must also make a three per cent reduction in its “resource spending” by 2014-15.

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Mr Gove was also asked about his plans for Building Schools for the Future (BSF) and whether school building schemes that had been given the green light now faced funding cuts of up to 40 per cent.

He said the Government was currently negotiating with building companies and wanted to “bring costs down”. Schools were informed about potential funding cuts in July, he added.

Professor Richard Grayson, who helped develop the idea of the pupil premium with Mr Clegg, said Lib Dems had been assured the funding for the scheme would be on top of the existing education budget.