In England in 2025 there is still too close a relationship between family income and educational attainment – and yet financial support for our most disadvantaged young people drops off a cliff when they reach the age of 16.
Pupil premium funding was introduced in 2011 to enable schools to provide targeted interventions for young people facing disadvantage, but even though education and training up to the age of 18 was made compulsory in England a decade ago, there is still no 16-19 student premium to support young people in their final two years of education.
There is no reason why it should stop at 16 because the gap in attainment between young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers continues into post-16 education and beyond. Economically disadvantaged students are over three grades behind their peers across their best three subjects by the time they finish their 16-19 education, and the gap is wider for disadvantaged students in long-term poverty, who are almost four grades behind. Half of young people from disadvantaged backgrounds begin their post-16 education missing a standard pass in GCSE English, maths or both, and around a quarter complete compulsory education without these grades.
The attainment gap continues post-16
All of this limits options for progression to further study and employment and has implications for longer-term health and wellbeing. There are also clear economic and social consequences for the UK as a whole if young people aren’t given the support they need to catch up in post-16 education. Young people from the most deprived backgrounds earn over 10 per cent less than their wealthier peers by age 28; they are much more likely to become NEET (not in education, employment or training); and even high attainers are less likely to progress to university than their wealthier peers.
Up until the age of 16, the pupil premium enables schools to provide additional evidence-informed interventions designed to support school-aged children with their academic attainment and progression to further study. Following its introduction, the disadvantage gap at key stage 4 at age 16 had narrowed until the pandemic.
The absence of pupil premium funding past the age of 16 compounds wider funding inequalities. Between 2010-11 and 2019-20, spending per student aged 16- 18 fell in real terms by 14 per cent in colleges and 28 per cent in school sixth forms.
Spending review submission
The AoC and Get Further are now working with a coalition of 13 organisations – including The Access Project, Association of Schools and Colleges, The Brilliant Club, Fair Education Alliance, Runway Training, Sutton Trust and Villiers Park – to campaign for a 16-19 student premium to support disadvantaged learners in post-16 education. We have submitted a joint spending review submission around the urgent need for such targeted funding post-16. With the evidence base we now have, we know that of the different funding options available for closing the disadvantage gap (including, for example, direct cash transfers such as the education maintenance allowance), a premium is the best option.
Thanks to work by the Education Endowment Foundation, the Education and Training Foundation, the Learning and Skills Research Network and others, we know that a 16-19 student premium would fund evidence-based interventions such as tuition, professional development for college staff, and promote engagement with and progression in learning. It would also provide additional opportunities and incentives for the development and testing of new approaches to supporting young people post-16.
With the right level of investment, post-16 education can close the gap in attainment and progression between young people from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. That fits well with the DfE focus on a system that works for some becoming a system that offers excellence for all. A post-16 premium would ensure that all young people are supported to access further opportunities in education and work.
Perhaps it’s time to question the purpose and outcome of using the indices of multiple deprivation in funding formulas and settlements. I wonder when the DfE last reviewed it when funding rules are rolled over?
A disadvantage multiplier ‘earns’ a provider a funding uplift. You have to go a long way back to find what its original objective was, but it’s broadly intended to direct proportionately more funding toward to more disadvantaged areas. It’s presumably on the basis that those with a higher level of education can command higher earnings (back in the days before student loans debt was a lifetime burden)
However, if you look at the IMD over time and the rankings of affluent to deprived areas, there is very little change.
If you took the most deprived 10% of areas and pumped all education funding into it, people in those areas would more than likely move up educational levels. Then what? There wouldn’t be jobs in those areas, so the majority move out (same with degree students with low proportions returning to deprived areas after graduating – why go back when you have £50k loan to pay off…). Then when IMD is re-calculated, the people that have move on are counted where they end up, not where they came from.
So, is IMD partly responsible for a brain drain from disadvantaged to more deprived areas? Could it even be viewed as perpetuating regional wealth inequality?
You could argue that it may benefit some individuals, but it’s a hard sell trying to suggest it benefits places…