The Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) has published new research to understand how schools report spending their Pupil Premium. Here, I reflect on what the findings might mean for leaders.
Managing the Pupil Premium budget is a crucial responsibility. With government spending on the fund surpassing £3 billion in 2025 – 26, it is a significant lever for us to help raise the educational outcomes of our disadvantaged pupils and narrow the attainment gap. However, because statements are not collated centrally, understanding how schools use the funding nationally has proved challenging.
To bridge this gap, for the second year in a row, the EEF worked with Verian to analyse a sample of over 1,000 Pupil Premium strategy statements.
The findings describe what schools report in their Pupil Premium strategy statements. They should not be interpreted as evidence of ‘best practice’. There are also methodological limitations that mean some findings should be treated with caution, as set out in Verian’s final report.
The findings do provide a useful prompt for reflection about:
- How accurately we’re diagnosing pupils’ needs
- Whether we’re intentionally selecting a few strong approaches to match challenges
Diagnosing our pupils’ needs
The research finds that the most frequently cited challenges facing disadvantaged pupils are:
- English/Literacy attainment (cited by 91% of schools)
- attendance (83%)
- social, emotional, and mental health (SEMH) and wellbeing (79%).
However, these vary based on school characteristics:
- By Phase: Primary schools were more likely to cite English/literacy attainment (92% vs 88%) and SEMH and wellbeing (82% vs 63%). Secondary schools were more likely to cite behaviour (57% vs 27%) and attendance (92% vs 83%).
- By level of disadvantage: Schools with higher proportions of disadvantage cited attendance (89% vs 74%) and English attainment (94% vs 85%) more frequently than those with lower proportions.
These findings validate shared challenges across the country but also indicate that priorities differ according to our disadvantaged pupil’s realities. This is a good reminder to ensure diagnosis of need genuinely reflects our school and context – backed by a wide range of data and avoiding generic assumptions. (See Step 1: Diagnose your pupils’ needs of EEF’s Guide to the Pupil Premium).
Being intentional when selecting approaches:
Much of the reported spending aligned with identified challenges, though the findings suggest a few cases of schools investing in certain approaches more frequently than they cited them as key challenges.
For example:
- While 79% of schools cited social, emotional, and mental health and wellbeing as a challenge, 92% funded targeted SEMH and wellbeing interventions.
- While 53% cited maths/numeracy attainment as a challenge, 79% reported funding targeted maths/numeracy interventions.
On the one hand, this is positive as it suggests that school leaders are being proactive in allocating resources. But it is also a reminder to reflect on whether we are committing to addressing the challenges we’ve identified.
Effective action is unlikely to come from spreading resources thinly. Instead, as Sonia Thompson, Director of St Matthews Research School highlights:
Monitor and Reflect: What does this mean for our school?
The research provides leaders and practitioners with a national picture to use as a comparative tool. whilst we continue to carefully diagnose pupils’ needs and commit to doing a few evidence-informed approaches well. Then, we can continue to make an impact on what matters to us all – giving our disadvantaged pupils the best chance of success.
As we strive to make every pound count to raise educational attainment for our disadvantaged pupils, this research presents school leaders with an opportunity to critically reflect:
- Do our identified barriers match pupil realities and data? Are we defaulting to generic assumptions?
- Are we focusing deeply on doing a few things well?
To help you with this, explore the EEF’s Reflection and Monitoring Tool.