The House of Commons Committee of Public Accounts has also added its voice to those calling for the quick publication of proposals for a fairer national system of school funding.
On the Pupil Premium itself, the committee’s report – Funding for Disadvantaged Pupils – says that while there has been some narrowing of the attainment gap more must be done to spread Pupil Premium best practice.
Pupil Premium payments amount to £1,300 per child at primary school and £935 at secondary school and the free school meals (FSM) system is the main indicator of eligibility.
Between 2011/12 and the end of 2014/15, the Department for Education (DfE) distributed £6 billion of Pupil Premium funding to schools.
Since its introduction, the attainment gap has closed overall by 4.7 percentage points in primary schools (from 18.4 to 13.7 per cent) and by 1.6 percentage points in secondary schools (from 29 to 27.4 per cent).
It means that currently, 73 per cent of Pupil Premium students achieve Level 4 or above in literacy and numeracy compared to 86.7 of their peers, and 36.5 per cent achieve five or more GCSEs at A* to C including English and maths compared with 64 per cent of their peers.
However, whether a child receives FSM is based on whether a child’s parents receive certain means-tested benefits. As such, the move to Universal Credit could cause problems, MPs on the committee have warned.
Their report states: “Government is currently reforming the benefits system, combining five benefits into one under Universal Credit, which means that from 2016 it will be impossible to identify disadvantaged pupils consistently with previous years.
“The Department (for Education) has not yet resolved the potentially destabilising impact that Universal Credit may have on its ability to identify disadvantaged pupils.
“It told us that it would need to agree and identify a new earnings threshold against which free school meals eligibility would be identified, and that it was working on it with the Department for Work and Pensions.”
The committee is now asking the DfE for a progress update within the next six months. Committee chair Meg Hillier MP said: “The committee is very concerned the roll-out of Universal Credit will make it harder to identify children eligible to benefit from the Pupil Premium – and indeed, the Department admits it still has no plan in place to address this. We are therefore asking for an update on its progress within six months.”
It is also calling for action on levels of “underclaiming”, which it says vary across local authorities. In some areas, more than 30 per cent of eligible pupils do not take-up their FSM entitlement compared to 0 per cent in other areas.
The report said that the DfE should “be clear about how it intends to incentivise local authorities to (encourage take up) well”.
Elsewhere, the committee is also calling for action on fairer school funding. Ms Hillier said she wanted to see a “clear timetable” for the DfE to review the funding formula, especially with regards to core deprivation funding.
Education unions and members of the Education Select Committee are already among those to have called for quick publication of the DfE’s proposals for fairer funding.
The DfE requires local authorities to use deprivation as a factor when allocating core funding to schools.
However, it still uses an old funding formula meaning different parts of the country get different amounts.
In 2014/15, for example, some secondary schools received around £3,000 a year less per disadvantaged pupil than other schools.
The report adds: “Variation exists even between schools with very similar proportions of disadvantaged pupils and cannot be fully explained due to differences in the cost of living.”
Ms Hillier added: “Without progress on these points, the Committee of Public Accounts does not believe disadvantaged pupils across the country can receive full value from Pupil Premium investment. That could mean many children it is designed to help will miss out on potentially life-changing benefits at a crucial stage in their development.”
On Pupil Premium spending in schools, the report said that while the evidence base for what works is growing, more needed to be done to spread best practice, especially to “weaker schools”.
The MPs are worried after hearing evidence suggesting that schools performing poorly on their Pupil Premium spending were less likely to actively seek-out help.
The report recommends: “As the evidence base grows, the Department should develop the necessary mechanisms to make sure schools use effective interventions with disadvantaged pupils. In addition, the Department should make Pupil Premium Reviews mandatory for those schools identified as using the Pupil Premium ineffectively.
“The Department should ensure that schools share best practice on how to use the Pupil Premium effectively. It should consider how best to encourage weaker schools to participate and set out its action plan and timetable to achieve this.”