PUPIL PREMIUM ELIGIBILITY AND FREE SCHOOL MEALS
- Session: 2013-14
- Date tabled: 01.07.2013
- Primary sponsor:
- Sponsors:
That this House welcomes the introduction of the pupil premium to help support disadvantaged pupils and close the attainment gap; notes that pupil premium funding is allocated to schools on the basis of students who have been eligible for free school meals in the past six years; further notes that, according to the Children's Society, approximately 700,000 children living in poverty as defined by the Government do not meet the eligibility criteria for free school meals because their parents are working yet receiving low wages; believes that as a consequence of the current eligibility criteria schools in rural areas with the lowest wages in the country are not receiving funding on the scale that they should; therefore urges the Government to make the pupil premium available to all children living within its own definition of child poverty or to all those whose parents will receive universal credit when it is introduced later this year; and further notes that this could be achieved at no greater cost than what has already been budgeted, if the value of the pupil premium remained at this year's level.