The pupil premium trapdoor

By David Higgerson on Oct 31, 10 01:06 PM

There's been a lot of talk about the pupil premium - Nick Clegg's figleaf for his party which will, apparently, see extra money spent on schools attended by deprived children.

We've already learnt that, contrary to Nick Clegg's earlier promise, it won't all be 'new money'. Education secretary came clean on that last week.

But here's something else I've discovered this week. Apparently, the money allocated will be determined, at least in part, by whether a child gets free school meals.

That shouldn't come as much of a surprise as it is an indicator which Labour was very fond of too. On one hand, there's a danger a school is unfairly stigmatised if the number of free school meals is well documented, but on the other hand it was a very good way of getting extra cash.

But, for all the hundreds of millions of pounds spent improving schools across the country, there are still schools where a hot school lunch isn't an option - because there isn't a kitchen. And where there isn't a school kitchen, you can't have school meals, which in turn means you can't have free school meals.

The result here is that some schools could miss out on the pupil premium. Doesn't sound that fair does it? The question is, will the coalition be prepared to do something about it, or is Clegg happy now he's got his headline?