Fighting for funding for our poorest pupils

I’m so impressed by how smoothly the return of all pupils to schools has gone. To all of you involved in supporting this – as school staff, governors, parents, grandparents and many other roles – thank you so much.

Meanwhile, the Department for Education slipped out a technical announcement about a change in funding policy. I looked into this and uncovered that Merton schools stand to miss out on £613,000 of funding – meant to be for children in low income families – because the Government isn’t going to fund it for children who became eligible between October 2020 and January 2021, until the following year. This was a period of huge increases in poverty.

My letter to Gavin Williamson is below and working with other Cabinet members and using some media contacts from my day job I got our London-wide letter into the FT and TES, and was quoted in the Evening Standard. Let’s hope this leads to a change in policy.