Pupil premium: how secondary schools are using the funding

Get a snapshot of what secondary schools across the country view as the priorities for their pupil premium spending from the Sutton Trust's report, and see if the approaches a number of secondary schools are taking to funding could work for you.

Last reviewed on 4 May 2021
School types: All · School phases: All
Ref: 42634
Contents
  1. Key findings from schools across the country 
  2. Targeting interventions and personalising the curriculum 
  3. Boosting literacy skills 
  4. Investing in social skills and emotional wellbeing 

Key findings from schools across the country 

The Sutton Trust’s school funding and pupil premium 2021 report shows that for 2020/21, out of the senior leaders in secondary schools surveyed: 

  • 17% see more 1:1/small group tuition (such as the National Tutoring Programme) as their biggest priority for spending their pupil premium 
  • 80% consider research evidence on the impact of different approaches and programmes when deciding which ones to adopt to improve pupil learning
  • 76% use past experience of what works to decide the above 
  • 69% use the Sutton Trust/EEF toolkit  
  • 33% have needed to cut back on teaching assistants (TAs) for financial reasons. 33% also report cutting teaching staff and support staff - however, this is lower than the 72% (support staff), 70% (TAs) and 69% (teaching staff) reported at secondary schools in 2019 

Targeting interventions and personalising the curriculum 

Providing identified pupils

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