The government's plans for school funding, which skew extra money for deprived pupils towards secondaries rather than primaries, flies against research evidence to the contrary, TES can reveal.

The move has been condemned by headteachers, union leaders and the chief executive of a major government-funded education research organisation.

Studies have shown that disadvantaged pupils are more likely to catch up with their peers if extra funding is provided as early as possible in their education.

But a TES analysis reveals that the government’s proposed national school funding formula would fund deprived pupils in secondaries at a rate that is nearly a third higher than in primaries.

The change would more than cancel out the £385 of extra pupil premium money that primary school pupils currently receive compared with their secondary counterparts.

Sir Kevan Collins is chief executive of the Education Endowment Foundation, set up with £125 million of government money to find the most cost-effective way of breaking the link between family income and educational achievement. He said the formula should have weighted deprivation-related funding towards primary schools instead.

“A shift or rebalance in funding [towards] secondaries is worrying because it means that we’re trying to catch up, rather than investing early,” Sir Kevan warned.

Research showed that investing earlier on in a child’s school life was the best way to close the attainment gap, he added. Ideally, funding would swing towards early years education.

The national funding formula consultation document says that the decision to weight deprivation money towards secondaries “reflects on our decision on the overall primary-to-secondary ratio, as well as typical local authority practice”.

A Department for Education spokesperson said: “The proposals we are currently consulting on will mean an end to the postcode lottery in school funding and will help to create a system that funds schools according to the needs of their pupils, rather than where they happen to live. Under the proposed national schools funding formula, more than half of England’s schools will receive a cash boost in 2018-19.”

The formula would replace a funding system that was “based on patchy and inconsistent decisions”, he added.

@CharlotteSantry

This is an edited article from the 27 January edition of TES. Subscribers can read the full article here. This week's TES magazine is available in all good newsagents. To download the digital edition, Android users can click here and iOS users can click here

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