The Department for Education pays England's schools 347 million pounds a year in pupil premium for looked-after, adopted and armed forces children. Its own published funding data does not say which schools got what.
Estimated reading time: 6 minutes
In short. The pupil premium allocations spreadsheet for the 2026 to 2027 financial year publishes an exact figure, school by school, for every one of the roughly 20,000 settings that receive the grant's largest element, funding for pupils on free school meals [4]. It does not do the same for the 347,552,205 pounds paid this year for looked-after children, previously looked-after children and armed forces children, almost 11% of the 3,179,453,605 pound total budget [4]. That money appears only as national totals by school type, or as local authority totals with a note that any local authority "with 5 or less than 5 pupils" for these categories has "had their figures suppressed for data protection" [4]. The technical note accompanying the release confirms academies are paid this money directly, calculated from exactly the same pupil-level data used for the published free-school-meals figures [2]. The one document that could show what a specific school actually received, its mandatory pupil premium strategy statement, requires only a single combined total and marks reporting on the armed forces element "optional" [5]. Three documented mistakes: four stars.
Every school in England that receives pupil premium funding can be looked up, by name, in a spreadsheet the Department for Education publishes alongside this year's conditions of grant [3]. Type in a school and the file returns its exact pupil count, its exact percentage of disadvantaged pupils, and its exact allocation in pounds, down to the last penny, for the grant's core element: money for pupils who have been eligible for free school meals within the last six years [4]. It is a genuinely granular release, covering 7,648,471 pupils on roll across every mainstream school, academy, special school and pupil referral unit in the country [4].
Three other kinds of pupil attract pupil premium funding too, and none of them appear in that per-school breakdown at all.
The money that goes missing between school and total
The conditions of grant set out four separate funding streams under the pupil premium name: free-school-meals eligibility, looked-after children (LAC), previously looked-after children (PLAC), and children from armed forces families (service pupil premium) [1]. The technical note is explicit that all four are calculated together and, for academies, paid together: "DfE will allocate PP grant to academies directly. This allocation will be based on FSM Ever 6 pupils, PLAC and eligible service children" [2]. For maintained schools, the same three elements are paid through the local authority, alongside a fourth, LAC funding, which the authority's virtual school head can either pass on to the child's school or spend centrally [1].
The allocations spreadsheet's school-level sheet, the one anyone can search by name, has nineteen columns. Every one of them is either an identifier, a pupil roll figure, or a free-school-meals figure. There is no column for looked-after children, previously looked-after children or service children, for any of the roughly 20,000 rows, whether the school is a local-authority-maintained primary or an academy paid directly [4].
Those three elements are not absent from the workbook. They appear on two other sheets, aggregated: once by seven national school-type categories, and once by 152 local authority areas [4]. Totalled across every school type, the figures are precise: 74,371.5 pupils attracted 26,773,740 pounds in service pupil premium; 58,078.5 attracted 156,231,165 pounds as previously looked-after children; 61,170 attracted 164,547,300 pounds as looked-after children [4]. Add them together and the department can state, to the pound, that 347,552,205 pounds of this year's 3,179,453,605 pound pupil premium budget went to these three groups [4]. What it does not state, anywhere in this release, is how much of that went to any individual school.
The local authority sheet carries its own limit on top of that. A note attached to it reads: "Local Authorities with 5 or less than 5 pupils or a percentage based on less than 5 pupils or an allocation amount based on less than 5 pupils for Service Child Pupil Premium, LAC or Post LAC have had their figures suppressed for data protection" [4]. That is a sensible privacy safeguard for an area with only a handful of looked-after children. It is also the only published rule anywhere in this release governing disclosure of these three funding streams, and it is a rule about withholding a figure, not about publishing one safely at a level below the area total.
The document that could show it does not ask for it
If the spreadsheet will not say what a specific school received, the next place to look is the school's own account of its funding: the pupil premium strategy statement every school with more than five eligible pupils must publish annually by 31 December, using DfE's own template [1].
The template's funding section asks for exactly one figure: "Pupil premium funding allocation this academic year", followed by a pound sign and a blank [5]. There is no instruction to split that figure by funding stream, and no field for a looked-after, previously looked-after or service child amount specifically. The template does have a section headed "Service pupil premium funding (optional)", which tells schools that receive it: "you may wish to provide the following information: how our service pupil premium allocation was spent" [5]. The conditions of grant describe the same section in the same terms, calling it "an optional reporting section in the strategy statement in which schools can report how they are using the SPP" [1]. Optional reporting on how the money was spent is not the same gap as no published figure for how much arrived, but it means the single most likely place a parent or governor could find a breakdown does not require one either.
The claims, tested
| The document's own words | What checking the citation shows | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| Academies are paid pupil premium directly, "based on FSM Ever 6 pupils, PLAC and eligible service children" together [2] | The published allocations sheet that lists every school by name has a column for FSM Ever 6 only; no PLAC or service child column exists at school level anywhere in the release [4] | Money calculated per school, published only in aggregate |
| Small local authority figures for these three funding streams are "suppressed for data protection" [4] | That is the only published disclosure rule for these streams at all; nothing describes how a governor or auditor could check a specific school's figure another way | A privacy rule doubling as the sole disclosure policy |
| Schools must publish a strategy statement showing their pupil premium funding, and governors "should scrutinise schools' strategy statements" [1] | The mandatory template asks for one combined total; reporting on how the armed forces element was spent is explicitly "optional" [5] | The accountability document does not require the breakdown either |
The mistakes, counted
Money calculated per school, published only in aggregate (1). The technical note says DfE calculates and, for academies, pays looked-after, previously looked-after and service child pupil premium directly to each setting, using the same per-pupil census data behind the published free-school-meals figures. The public allocations release never states the resulting amount for any individual school; those three streams, 347,552,205 pounds this year, appear only as national totals by school type and suppressed local authority totals.
A privacy rule doing double duty as the only disclosure policy (2). Suppressing local authority figures with fewer than five affected pupils is a reasonable safeguard on its own. But it is the sole published rule governing how these three funding streams reach the public at all, and it works by withholding rather than by publishing safely at some other level, such as the school-type or national total that already exists for every other element of the grant.
The accountability document does not ask for the breakdown either (3). The one place a specific school's actual funding could be checked against its own published account, the mandatory pupil premium strategy statement, requires a single combined total. Reporting on how the service child element was spent is explicitly optional in both the template and the conditions of grant's own wording.
Credit where due
This is not a case of the department hiding a number it does not otherwise account for. The free-school-meals element, 89% of the 3.18 billion pound total, is published to the penny for every school in the country, a genuinely large and granular disclosure most government grants do not match [4]. Looked-after children's funding specifically has its own independent check that does not depend on this release at all: Ofsted's framework for inspecting local authority children's services requires inspectors to examine the virtual school annual report, including "evidence of how the VSH's spending of the premium has supported the achievement of the children looked-after by their local authority" [1]. The grant also carries real financial enforcement across all four streams alike: the Comptroller and Auditor General can examine how the money was used, and the Secretary of State can recover funding from a school or authority that does not comply [1]. None of that reaches the public in the same searchable, school-by-school form as the free-school-meals figures, but the money is not unwatched, only unpublished at the level anyone outside government could check it.
Verdict
Four stars, from three documented mistakes. A department that can state a national total to the pound, and a per-school figure for 89% of that total to the pound, chooses not to publish the remaining 347 million pounds at the level where a parent, governor or journalist could actually look up their own school. The strategy statement that was supposed to be the public's window into the figure does not ask for it either.
Sources
- Department for Education, "Pupil premium conditions of grant for the 2026 to 2027 financial year" (guidance, checked 24 September 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2026-to-2027/pupil-premium-conditions-of-grant-for-the-2026-to-2027-financial-year - landing page: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2026-to-2027
- Department for Education, "Pupil premium 2026 to 2027 technical note" (guidance, checked 24 September 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2026-to-2027/pupil-premium-2026-to-2027-technical-note
- Department for Education, "Pupil premium: allocations and conditions of grant 2026 to 2027" (publication landing page, checked 24 September 2026). https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2026-to-2027
- Department for Education, "Pupil premium allocations for the 2026 to 2027 financial year" (spreadsheet, published September 2026, checked 24 September 2026), sheets All_Schools, School_Type, Local_Authority and Notes. https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/6ab0f5733f8e4e96a6a66a8e/pupil-premium-allocations-for-the-2026-to-2027-financial-year-september-2026.xlsx
- Department for Education, "Pupil premium strategy statement blank template" (docx, checked 24 September 2026). https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66f66e4630536cb927482873/Pupil_premium_strategy_statement_blank_template.docx