UPDATE: Service Pupil Premium Includes Parents that have Divorced Since 2011

Naval_Families_Federation

Since April 2013, provision has been made for pupils that were eligible for the Service Pupil Premium since 2011, to continue to be eligible if their parents are no longer member of the Armed Forces, have died in Service or have divorced.

For families that have divorced, in practise this means that the divorce will have to have taken place since the introduction of the Premium in 2011 and the child must have been eligible for Premium in 2011.

In the 2014 to 2015 financial year, the Premium will be set at £300 per Service child. The closing date for informing schools that child(ren) are eligible to claim the Service Pupil Premium is 16 January.

martinbuckley

How do I ensure that the £300 that my child's school get for my child is actually spent on my child, rather than being swallowed up in various budgets?

Naval_Families_Federation

Hello Martinbuckley,

Thank you for your post. There are currently no set guidelines as to how the funds can be spent, however, some best practise ideas can be found here: http://www.education.gov.uk/.../a00212882/service-children (Service Pupil Premium Case Studies).

You may also like to suggest to the school that they invite parents to submit ideas of how the fund could be spent, or ask the school how the money is being spent.

Kind regards,
NFF

Trying_to_be_good

martinbuckley wrote: »

How do I ensure that the £300 that my child's school get for my child is actually spent on my child, rather than being swallowed up in various budgets?

You have absolutely no right to ensure that the government's Service Pupil Premium is spent on your individual child. The whole idea is that it goes to the school to help narrow any progression/achievement gap between those children who don't suffer the disruption of service life, and those who do. That will rarely mean helping individual children, but is more likely to be putting in place support processes for children (more generally than as individuals) to bridge that gap.

As the NFF say, get involved with the school, share you ideas on what you think would work for your own child and those in the similar situation - it could be breakfast club, resilience support, numeracy or literacy support/additional staff, somewhere the school can give service children access to skype a deployed parent etc - what it won't be is an ipad or laptop for individual children as some schools originally tried.

martinbuckley

Trying_to_be_good wrote: »

You have absolutely no right to ensure that the government's Service Pupil Premium is spent on your individual child. The whole idea is that it goes to the school to help narrow any progression/achievement gap between those children who don't suffer the disruption of service life, and those who do.

So what you are saying is if my child happens to be an A* student who is studying separate sciences and doing some GCSEs a year early, her £300 is spent elsewhere?

laurel7172

martinbuckley wrote: »

So what you are saying is if my child happens to be an A* student who is studying separate sciences and doing some GCSEs a year early, her £300 is spent elsewhere?

How do you know that your child's achievements aren't due in part to how the school is spending their service premium?

It isn't "her £300". It's an allocation of funds that (logically) is calculated on the number of services children, but doesn't attach to individuals.

martinbuckley

Something to do with I've just discovered that the other military kids at my school (who live in FQ) have been getting free revision books for the past couple of years, whilst I (living in my own home) have been paying for them!

laurel7172

I can see how that could be annoying! Answers, I'm afraid, can only come from your school. It could be a geographical oversight. The books might only have been distributed to those at risk of not achieving the necessary grade-you won't know unless you ask. I'm school staff and a governor on my school's finance committee, and I know that our premium funding contributes to programmes for the more able as well as for those at risk of falling behind. It just isn't as immediately visible as revision books.

Speaking as a parent, although we aren't a military family, it can *feel* that school funds of all kinds are vacuumed away from families who get on, support their children's learning and pay their own way. It was definitely an eye-rolling moment to hear of young people whose attitude put them risk of failing their GCSEs being sent on a free outward bound holiday, then be asked for £80 for a Duke of Edinburgh's Award expedition, for instance. However, my daughter also took separate sciences, which certainly cost the school a *lot* more than a free holiday...the truth is that, by every measure, financial or otherwise, she got more out of school than the young people getting the immediately obvious freebies.

Alias_Omega

I plan to ask the school governor at the next PTA, how this £600 has been spent, soon to be £900.

Trying_to_be_good

It's likely to already be on your school's website, worth taking a look before the PTA. Ours goes mainly on a lot of extra numeracy and literacy support, plus some before and after school clubs.

It's not guaranteed money in the future, so a bit like a family receiving tax credits, it can't be assumed long-term as income for the school. A divorce with the service parent no longer having residence for the children (i.e. kids staying with Mum, the non-service parent in the majority of cases) has also affected entitlement until now, making it difficult for schools to plan longer-term.

martinbuckley

Trying_to_be_good wrote: »

It's likely to already be on your school's website, worth taking a look before the PTA. Ours goes mainly on a lot of extra numeracy and literacy support, plus some before and after school clubs.

Is that for the service kids, or for everyone? Can the local Council Worker's kids go to these events?

Imagine if the money spent on buying a Health Lottery ticket went to fund road building, or a collection for a new childcare unit at your local hospital ended up funding a geriatric care unit in Newcastle instead.