A long-term multi-million pound funding commitment has been confirmed for a scheme supporting looked-after young people in post-16 education.
The Department for Education will pump £41.5 million into pupil premium plus post-16 funding over the next three years, after an evaluation of the pilot scheme found it was helping to “push back” the cliff edge of support at age 16.
The commitment until 2029 follows calls from pilot leads to extend the funding beyond one year so councils can strategically plan support for disadvantaged young people.
The funding forms part of the new ‘children, families and youth grant’, which will consolidate five funding streams, including the pupil premium plus post-16, into one grant worth £3.1 billion over three years.
Earlier this week, a report into the national rollout of the pilot was published, which had surveyed virtual school heads on how they managed to boost engagement and attainment among disadvantaged learners.
The research tracked three cohorts of local authorities that joined the pilot between 2021 and 2025 and found persistent gaps in funding and delivery.
Virtual school heads warned of a reliance on short-term projects in post-16 settings due to time-limited funding and inconsistencies in how the funding rate was doled out across England.
“Our school improvement plan is centred around three-year goals in our journey – unfortunately, the time-limited element means many plans we have for post-16 have often been short notice or one-off projects, nor can we enhance our structure further with permanent or longer-term posts,” one lead said.
The report also found a lack of parity with school funding was placing pressure on provision and called for an overhaul of the post-16 funding formula to mirror the statutory pupil premium plus in schools, alongside providing long-term funding certainty.
Some councils received as little as £110 per student, compared with £2,630 per pupil premium plus funding for looked-after children aged under 16.
But funding guidance from last month confirmed the DfE will not change the distribution formula used in 2025-26.
Two-tier system
The post-16 pupil premium plus pilot launched in 2021 with £3 million in funding for local authorities to appoint virtual school heads. These leads work with colleges, training providers and social workers to improve outcomes for looked-after young people and care leavers aged 16 to 18.
Thirty local authorities joined the first cohort, followed by an additional 28 in the second year and 94 from 2023-24. The DfE has spent around £40 million on the scheme so far.
The evaluation explored the programme up to the 2023-24 academic year and found earlier cohorts received higher overall allocations. Cohort 1 areas were awarded an average of £94,706, compared with £57,539 for those joining in cohort 3.
This reflected a funding cap that ensured councils in cohorts 1 and 2 did not see reductions of more than 15 per cent year-on-year. The cap was removed in 2024-25, meaning all authorities are now funded using the same formula.
Researchers said this change, alongside the expansion of eligibility beyond further education colleges to all post-16 settings, including apprenticeship providers, contributed to falling per-student rates.
Estimated funding per learner stood at £900 in 2021-22 and £920 in 2022-23, before dropping to £413 after eligibility widened in October 2023. Across the full 2023-24 academic year, this equated to an average of £355 per learner.
In 2023-24, average rates varied by councils depending on when they joined the pilot: £522 for councils in cohort 1, £440 for cohort 2 and £361 for cohort 3.
The report warned this was creating a “postcode lottery”, with allocations ranging from £110 to £1,257 per learner.
“This is despite DfE’s attempts to make funding allocation equitable across virtual schools and again suggests a postcode lottery effect in real terms,” it said.
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