Last modified on Tue 4 May 2021 01.39 EDT
Top story: Local elections campaigning heats up
Hello, I’m Warren Murray back with Tuesday’s news.
The UK still has a system that allows power to be abused, Keir Starmer has said, pledging that the Labour party will “clean up our politics”. In the final days before polls close for local, mayoral, Welsh and Scottish elections, the Labour leader will attempt to draw a close connection between the stories of Tory sleaze and their effect on ordinary people. Labour sources said Starmer would link the row over Boris Johnson’s lavish Downing St refurbishments to the early days of the pandemic and question whether the prime minister was distracted as he apparently sought donors to sponsor the decorations, which he has now funded himself.
Andy Jolley, a campaigner who compiled FoI responses from local authorities, estimates that schools may have lost between £150m and £200m in additional pupil premium payments because of the date change, although he suggests the true figure will never be known.
Jolleyâs FoIs revealed that schools in Kent will miss out on £4m in funding, while Birmingham city council estimates it will lose £3.7m that would have been paid for the additional 3,000 pupils in the city qualifying for free school meals by January.
Pupil premium funding for schools amounts to £1,345 a year for each primary school pupil and £955 for every secondary pupil enrolled who receive free school meals. Eligibility was previously determined by school rolls in January. But this year the DfE shifted the cut-off date back to October, so missing out a surge of newly-eligible families who began receiving benefits during the pandemicâs third wave.
MINISTERS must “come clean” over their slashing of funding for tens of thousands of disadvantaged pupils in England and repay the missing money to schools, teachers demanded today.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) union condemned the Department for Education’s (DfE) change to cut-off dates for children to qualify for pupil premium funding, which will lead to many schools losing cash for vital support such as free school meals.
By moving the date back from January this year to last October, the government is estimated to have saved up to £200 million at the expense of the most vulnerable children, based on local authorities’ responses to freedom of information (FOI) requests.
Last modified on Thu 29 Apr 2021 17.32 EDT
Schools are struggling to access the government’s controversial national tutoring programme (NTP) aimed at supporting disadvantaged children in the wake of the pandemic because of a shortage of qualified tutors in some parts of England, school leaders have warned.
The National Association of Head Teachers (NAHT) called on the government to give schools more funding and allow them greater flexibility to use staff they may be familiar with, which would enable them to widen the scheme swiftly in order to meet pupils’ needs.
“In some parts of the country there’s been no history and no experience of tutoring,” said Nick Brook, NAHT deputy general secretary. “When we talk to our members, they are telling us that they are struggling to access the schemes.”