Schools receive additional funding for pupils who are eligible for the Pupil Premium Grant (PPG). This funding is designed to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children. In primary schools, the grant is currently worth £1,515 per pupil each year, with additional funding available for service children, pupils previously looked after, and those currently in care.

For many schools, Pupil Premium makes up a significant part of the overall budget. As a result, schools are under pressure to show clear evidence that the funding is making a difference. Ofsted places strong emphasis on outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and closely examines how schools use Pupil Premium to support them. The Government expects schools to invest this funding in high-quality teaching, targeted academic support, and wider strategies such as improving attendance, behaviour, and wellbeing.

The pressure to close the attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers is understandable. Children growing up in poverty face significant barriers to learning, and these barriers show up early. By the end of Reception, the attainment gap is already 4.6 months. By the end of primary school, this doubles, and by the end of secondary school it reaches 19.2 months (EEF, 2025).

Despite the Pupil Premium being introduced in 2011, this gap has not gone away. This raises an uncomfortable but important question: why?

The Limits of What Schools Can Do

Schools can provide excellent teaching. They can offer interventions, nurture children’s strengths, and create calm, supportive environments. But when children are living with instability, fear, or emotional distress at home, learning is much harder.

This is not to say that all children eligible for Pupil Premium experience difficult home lives. Many do not. However, the data from one school shows a clear pattern: pupils receiving PPG are far more likely to be affected by serious safeguarding concerns than their peers.

In my school, 17% of pupils are eligible for Pupil Premium. Yet of the 133 safeguarding concerns recorded between September 2025 and December 16th 2025, over half (51%) involve PPG pupils. PPG pupils are three times as represented in safeguarding concerns as expected. This imbalance becomes even more striking when we look more closely. There is a consistent pattern of over‑representation of PPG pupils across the school’s safeguarding data. They feature prominently in Operation Encompass notifications, domestic abuse concerns, drug‑related issues, and cases involving families under police investigation. The most serious child protection concerns—those relating to physical or sexual abuse—also involve Pupil Premium pupils exclusively within the current dataset. Additionally, the majority of physical aggression incidents relate to this group.

Overall, the safeguarding picture shows that Pupil Premium pupils carry a disproportionately high level of vulnerability compared with their peers. Unsurprisingly, this affects their emotional wellbeing too: 65% of concerns related to low mood involve PPG pupils.

When children are anxious, distressed, or living in survival mode, their ability to focus, remember, and learn is significantly reduced. No number of interventions or carefully planned lessons can fully overcome that reality.

What Needs to Change?

Schools must continue to do what they do best. High-quality teaching remains essential. Identifying gaps, running targeted interventions, and striving for academic success will always matter. Schools must also continue to create emotionally safe environments—and this is something many schools have worked hard to prioritise.

At West Witney Primary School, we are proud to have recently received the Nurture School Award from Nurture UK, which recognised:

“There is a wealth of skill, knowledge and commitment, and the result of this is an environment where children feel known, understood, and supported.”

(Nurture UK, 2025)

However, even the most nurturing school has limits. Schools cannot control what happens in children’s homes. They cannot fix unsafe environments, change parenting choices, or resolve deep-rooted social inequality. These are not school failures—they are systemic issues that require action beyond the school gates.

An Unsustainable Burden

Over time, schools have taken on an ever-expanding role. Many now provide wraparound childcare, supervise tooth brushing, carry out home visits to support attendance, and deliver extensive pastoral care—often without additional funding.

At the same time, the systems designed to support families are under significant strain. Schools complete Strengths and Needs assessments to access early help, yet waiting times of up to eight weeks mean support often arrives too late or in limited form. While schools make appropriate safeguarding referrals when risk is high, these frequently result in no further action.

Mental Health Support Teams are now in place, but eligibility thresholds remain high. Many children who are clearly struggling do not meet the criteria for sustained support. Schools also offer workshops, drop-ins, and parent sessions, yet the families who need them most are often the hardest to reach.

Moving Forward

Schools must continue to explore new ways of supporting disadvantaged pupils, even within these constraints. One possible approach is greater honesty with families about the impact of home circumstances on children’s learning—but this brings difficult questions. Could such conversations lead to positive change, or risk pushing families further away?

What is clear is that schools cannot solve this problem alone. The attainment gap is not simply an educational issue—it is a social one. If the Government is serious about closing it, there must be coordinated, properly funded, multi-agency support that addresses disadvantage at its root.

Until then, schools will continue to do everything they can. But goodwill, resilience, and dedication—however strong—are not enough to close a gap that begins long before children walk through the school doors.

Blog by Sam Birnage