This week, the Coalition Government announced that a Pupil Premium, funded from outside the schools budget, will be introduced next September. It will mean that from next year, schools taking disadvantaged children will get the additional money they need to provide them with the extra support they deserve, no matter where they are in the country. This could mean more individual tuition or catch-up classes, but it will be for the school to decide, we won’t be telling headteachers how to spend the money.

This is a real Liberal Democrat achievement. It was the centrepiece of our education policy during the election campaign, and it is now being implemented in Government. I remember campaigning on it myself in Bury North and being proud to do so. It’s happening now and will benefit children in Bury and right across the country.

While the Conservatives had a similar policy, it was the Liberal Democrats who pushed for it to be funded from outside the schools budget, and for it to feature specifically in the coalition agreement. And it’s no secret that it was one of the sticking points of the negotiations with Labour – they simply refused to agree to it.

It’s odd that Labour couldn’t support a policy designed to support the most vulnerable in our society and give them the chances that other children have.  

Liberal Democrats are committed to the Pupil Premium because we understand that education can be a key driver of social mobility. But it is shameful that we still have an education system which too often perpetuates inequality rather than tackles it. The poorest children are only half as likely to leave school with 5 good GCSEs than their better-off classmates. The Pupil Premium will help in tackling the decades-old failure to break the link between social background and performance at school, opening up opportunities for children regardless of where they are born. 

The Coalition Government is now consulting on the way in which the premium should be implemented. The consultation includes options for how deprivation should be calculated

– in relation to children on Free School Meals

– in relation to tax credits

– by using marketing classifications like MOSAIC or ACORN 

And it includes questions about other groups who might benefit, such as children in care or children of those serving in the armed forces, and raises the issue of how it could be extended to cover children in the early years. We are determined that it has the best possible impact and I urge you to get involved in the consultation and to give the Department for Education your views.

This week the Coalition Government’s Academies Bill will also become law. It won’t be a perfect law. It does things I don’t wholly agree with, and it’s coming into law quicker than I’d have liked. But it’s a welcome change from the overly centralised school system in place until now, and it gives a strategic role for Local Authorities that I welcome. It gives more flexibility for headteachers to run their schools as they and their communities think best.

By working within the Coalition, Liberal Democrat members of the House of Lords have been able to secure important protections for the most vulnerable, such as children with Special Educational Needs, that we could not have done from the Opposition benches. This is what coalition means – the Academies Bill is a flagship Conservative policy and the pupil premium is a flagship Liberal Democrat policy – and they are both part of the programme for Government.

Rick