Pupil Premium Funding 2026-27: Rates, Eligibility And Allocations Explained
Most schools spend the autumn term writing their pupil premium strategy statement, ready for the 31 December deadline. This year there is an additional job. From September 2026, free school meals eligibility expands to every household on Universal Credit. The rules about which of those pupils attract the grant change at the same time, and the two no longer line up.
This guide covers the 2026-27 pupil premium funding rates, who qualifies, how DfE calculates your allocation, and when payments arrive. It also sets out what the free school meals expansion does and does not change for your budget.
Key takeaways
- The pupil premium grant is worth £1,550 per eligible primary pupil and £1,100 per eligible secondary pupil in 2026-27, up £35 and £25 on last year.
- Pupil premium plus is £2,690 for looked-after children and children previously looked after.
- Service pupil premium is £360 per eligible pupil.
- Free school meals eligibility expands to all households on Universal Credit from September 2026. Only pupils whose households meet the existing £7,400 income threshold will count towards the Ever 6 FSM cohort.
- Your money this year is untouched. Rates run by financial year, and the 2026-27 allocation was calculated from the October 2025 census, months before the rule changed.
- The narrower cohort first shows up in 2027-28 allocations, which are built on the October 2026 census.
What is pupil premium funding?
Pupil premium is additional funding for state-funded schools in England, first introduced in 2011 by the Department for Education. It exists to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils and to close the attainment gap between them and their peers.
Generally, disadvantaged pupils leave primary school behind non-disadvantaged pupils in maths, and the difference in educational attainment widens across secondary. Schools in England receive funding for every eligible pupil on roll, and the DfE expects schools to spend it on approaches that improve outcomes for those pupils.
The pupil premium grant is extra funding for schools, paid on top of your core budget from the national funding formula. Deprivation funding inside that formula is a separate stream, which is where a lot of confusion starts. The two are calculated differently and arrive by different routes.
The grant is not a personal budget attached to individual pupils. Your school decides how to spend the money, and the grant can benefit pupils outside that group too. However, the spending improves outcomes for the pupils it was allocated for.
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The Department for Education sets funding rates per financial year, running from April to March.
| Funding criteria | 2026-27 rate | 2025-26 rate | Change |
|---|---|---|---|
| Pupils in year groups Reception to Year 6 recorded as FSM Ever 6 | £1,550 | £1,515 | +£35 |
| Pupils in Years 7 to 11 recorded as FSM Ever 6 | £1,100 | £1,075 | +£25 |
| Looked-after children | £2,690 | £2,630 | +£60 |
| Children previously looked after | £2,690 | £2,630 | +£60 |
| Eligible service children, reception to Year 11 | £360 | £350 | +£10 |
Pupil premium plus for looked after children (LAC)
Pupil premium plus supports children and young people in care, and those who have left care. Both qualify for £2,690, and mainstream, special and alternative provision schools all receive it for eligible pupils, including pupils with special educational needs.
The payment routes differ, and schools regularly get caught out by this. Funding for looked after children goes to the local authority (rather than the school directly), where the virtual school head manages it alongside the child’s school and the pupil’s social worker. The local authority is accountable for how those children and young people benefit from it. Funding for previously looked-after children comes directly to the school.
Children previously looked after are those who left local authority care or other state care through adoption, a special guardianship order or a child arrangements order. Equivalent arrangements from outside England and Wales also count.
Service pupil premium
Service children qualify for £360 in additional funding. A pupil is eligible if a parent serves in the regular armed forces, or if any school census in the past six years recorded them as a service child. A pupil also qualifies if a parent died while serving and the pupil receives a pension under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme or the War Pensions Scheme.
Service pupil premium is paid on top of anything else a pupil attracts. The other categories, however, do not stack: a pupil recorded as both looked after and FSM Ever 6 attracts the higher rate only.
Is pupil premium keeping pace with inflation?
The 2026-27 uplift is roughly 2.3% in cash terms, which the House of Commons Library estimates as a small real-terms fall once inflation is applied. DfE froze rates entirely between 2016-17 and 2019-20, then again across 2020-21 and 2021-22.
Sutton Trust research published in April 2026 found 86% of school leaders say the grant is insufficient, and 43% have redirected the grant to plug general budget gaps. Almost three-quarters reported providing significantly less tutoring with pupil premium funding since the National Tutoring Programme ended.
Who is eligible for pupil premium funding?
Three groups of pupils in state-funded schools in England attract the pupil premium grant.
- Pupils eligible for free school meals (FSM), now or in the past six years. This is the FSM Ever 6 cohort, and it accounts for the large majority of the funding schools receive.
- Looked-after and previously looked-after children. Eligibility runs through the local authority and the virtual school, not through the census alone.
- Service children. Recorded through the autumn school census.
Pupil premium eligibility is not the same as current free school meals eligibility. In January 2026, 26.5% of pupils in England were eligible for free school meals, over 2.2 million children. The Ever 6 cohort is always larger, because it includes pupils who qualified at any point in the past six years.
Early years pupil premium is also available to help improve educational provisions for children aged 3-4 years old.
What Ever 6 FSM means
A pupil counts in the Ever 6 FSM cohort if they have had a recorded period of free school meals (FSM) eligibility at any point in the previous six years. For 2026-27 allocations, that means any recorded eligibility since January 2020. For example, a pupil recorded in March 2021 stays in the cohort until March 2027.
Once a pupil enters the cohort, they stay in it for six years, even if the household’s circumstances improve and they no longer qualify for a free meal. Your cohort therefore changes gradually rather than in steps, and that shapes how you plan.
Pupils from families with no recourse to public funds can qualify for free school meals under separate eligibility criteria, and where they do, they attract the grant in the same way.
Free school meals expansion: what changes in September 2026
This change is likely to catch more schools out than any other part of the rules.
Targeted FSM and expanded FSM
From the start of the 2026-27 academic year, every child in a household receiving Universal Credit becomes entitled to a free school meal. Government estimates put this at over half a million more children. The expansion is worth around £500 a year per child to parents. For schools, the effect on funding is less direct.
FSM eligibility then splits into two categories:
- Targeted FSM, which keeps the existing £7,400 household income threshold.
- Expanded FSM, which covers pupils in Universal Credit households above that threshold, and applies to meals only.
Why more free school meals will not mean more pupil premium
Government guidance is explicit: following the expansion of FSM, only pupils eligible for targeted FSM will be part of the Ever 6 FSM cohort. Pupils who become eligible for free school meals for the first time through the expanded category will not attract the pupil premium grant.
From September 2026, the number of children eating a free meal in your school and the number generating the pupil premium grant will pull apart. Your FSM rate will no longer work as a proxy for disadvantage.
Pupils already in the Ever 6 cohort keep their place in it for six years. That includes pupils whose household income rises and move into the expanded category or lose eligibility altogether. The cohort therefore shrinks slowly across the six-year window.
The dates cross two calendars and are running at once. Rates and allocations run by financial year, from April to March. The FSM change runs by academic year, from September.
Your 2026-27 allocation is unaffected. DfE calculated it from the October 2025 census, months before the rule changed. The first allocations to feel the change are 2027-28, built on the October 2026 and January 2027 census data.
How your pupil premium allocation is calculated
Allocations use pupil counts from a single census snapshot:
- For mainstream and special schools, 2026-27 allocations use the October 2025 school census.
- Pupil referral units and alternative provision academies use the January 2026 census.
- Looked-after children figures come from the children looked after returns in March 2025 and March 2026, and general hospital schools are funded through a separate route.
Because the count is a snapshot, a pupil arriving in February brings no funding to the child’s school for that financial year. Their prior free school meals history counts from the next census onwards.
Why your published allocation may look lower than expected
The school-level allocations published on GOV.UK show only the deprivation FSM6 element. DfE suppresses the figures for looked-after children, service children, alternative provision census pupils and hospital school pupils for data protection reasons.
Academy trusts receive the full, unsuppressed figures through the document exchange service in DfE Sign-in. If your published allocation looks short, this is usually why.
Maintained schools can check their figures with the local authority. If your October census undercounted pupils who had recently started qualifying, that error follows your budget for the whole year.
When pupil premium is paid to schools
Pupil premium payments arrive in four instalments across the financial year.
| Instalment | Local authorities and maintained schools | Academies and free schools | Non-maintained special schools |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 30 June 2026 | 8 July 2026 | 18 August 2026 |
| 2 | 30 September 2026 | 8 October 2026 | 16 October 2026 |
| 3 | 31 December 2026 | 11 January 2027 | 18 January 2027 |
| 4 | 31 March 2027 | 8 April 2027 | 16 April 2027 |
Pupil Premium Funding Allocations 2016- 2026/27
| Financial year | Primary FSM Ever 6 | Secondary FSM Ever 6 | Looked after and previously looked after | Service children |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-27 | £1,550 | £1,100 | £2,690 | £360 |
| 2025-26 | £1,515 | £1,075 | £2,630 | £350 |
| 2024-25 | £1,480 | £1,050 | £2,570 | £340 |
| 2023-24 | £1,455 | £1,035 | £2,530 | £335 |
| 2022-23 | £1,385 | £985 | £2,410 | £320 |
| 2021-22 | £1,345 | £955 | £2,345 | £310 |
| 2020-21 | £1,345 | £955 | £2,345 | £310 |
| 2019-20 | £1,320 | £935 | £2,300 | £300 |
| 2018-19 | £1,320 | £935 | £2,300 | £300 |
| 2017-18 | £1,320 | £935 | £1,900 | £300 |
| 2016-17 | £1,320 | £935 | £1,900 | £300 |
Primary and secondary rates held flat for four consecutive years to 2019-20, and again across 2020-21 and 2021-22. The looked-after rate jumped 21% in 2018-19, the largest single-year move in the series.
A note on recovery premium
Recovery premium was separate, time-limited funding introduced alongside the National Tutoring Programme, worth over £300 million in its first year. Recovery premium ended at the end of the 2023-24 academic year, and the department withdrew the guidance in September 2024. Schools no longer receive it, and it should not appear in current budget planning.
What are schools required to do with pupil premium?
The grant is not ring-fenced to named pupils. Three conditions apply to how schools plan their spending.
- Publish a pupil premium strategy statement. Schools must publish theirs for the 2026-27 academic year by 31 December 2026, using the DfE template. Each academy within a trust publishes its own.
- Spend within the menu of approaches. Every activity funded by the pupil premium grant must fall under one of three categories. Those are developing high-quality teaching, providing targeted academic support, and tackling non-academic barriers to academic success, including social and emotional wellbeing.
- Expect scrutiny. The department reviews a sample of published statements each year, and Ofsted considers how schools spend pupil premium as part of inspection.
Schools often read that third tier too narrowly. For example, spending on attendance or emotional wellbeing counts, provided your pupil premium strategy explains how it improves educational outcomes.
Every school makes the spending decisions themselves. Two schools with identical allocations can direct their spending very differently and both be compliant, provided each links that spending to the needs of its disadvantaged pupils.
The Education Endowment Foundation’s evidence points to high-quality teaching as the first priority, with targeted support and wider strategies alongside it. Its toolkit is aimed at supporting schools to choose between them.
In practice, most schools spend pupil premium across all three tiers. A primary might fund maths CPD for school staff, metacognition skills, small-group and one-to-one support for eligible pupils, and breakfast club places or a family support worker for pupils whose barriers sit outside the classroom. A secondary might fund departmental CPD, targeted GCSE intervention groups, and equipment or travel costs so disadvantaged children are not priced out of after-school revision.
What can pupil premium be spent on?
What pupil premium spending can be spent on looks like day-to-day sits outside the scope of this guide. Primary schools will find 45 pupil premium strategies costed and ranked in a separate guide.
Using the pupil premium for one-to-one maths tutoring
From September 2026, more pupils in your school will be visibly in need, and the funding that follows them will not grow to match. Every intervention you choose has to stretch further.
One-to-one tuition sits squarely in the targeted academic support tier, and the evidence behind it is strong. Cost is what keeps schools from offering it to more pupils who need support. At around £45 a session with a traditional provider, supporting even ten pupils weekly costs more than £16,000 across a year. Pay by the session and every extra pupil adds cost, so the budget sets the size of your cohort before anyone looks at need.
Third Space Learning has worked on that problem since 2013, providing online one-to-one maths tutoring to the pupils who need it most, and more than 50% of Third Space Learners have been eligible for pupil premium funding. Skye, our AI maths tutor built by teachers, gives pupils personalised one-to-one lessons and adapts to the individual: pupils who show secure understanding skip ahead to independent practice and challenge questions.
Pricing works the other way round. Schools pay one fixed annual fee for unlimited sessions, from £3,500 a year for primary schools and £5,000 for secondary, depending on school size. The fee does not rise as you add pupils, so schools can reach more pupils on the same budget as need grows.
“It’s significantly cheaper than before when we had 20 sessions a week, and we were paying per session. Now, because it’s unlimited across Year 4-6, we’ve got 90 pupils per year group who can have multiple sessions per week for just £6,000 per year.”
Lucia Romeu, Assistant Headteacher, Danegrove Primary School
Wormley CofE Primary funds its tutoring through pupil premium, and reports that in 2025, 93% of their Third Space Learners reached the expected level in maths.
In a secondary school, Skye also adds one-to-one specialist maths support that the department does not have to staff.
“I’m not a maths specialist, which highlights a key benefit: Skye delivers the maths teaching while I act as a facilitator. This setup adds capacity without increasing workload and allows our maths teachers to focus on classroom teaching.”
Gareth Barratt, Stage 4 Director, Richard Rose Central Academy
Future changes for pupil premium
The Department for Education has signalled that it intends to move away from free school meals eligibility as the trigger for deprivation funding, using household income data instead, with a consultation expected during 2026. That would reshape both the pupil premium grant and the deprivation factors inside the national funding formula.
Nothing is settled yet, so plan 2026-27 on current rules and keep an eye on the consultation.
Pupil premium funding FAQs
£1,550 for a primary pupil and £1,100 for a secondary pupil in the Ever 6 cohort in 2026-27. Looked-after children and children previously looked after attract £2,690, and eligible service children £360.
Rates rose by £35 for primary and £25 for secondary. The bigger change is that free school meals eligibility expands in September 2026, and only pupils qualifying under the targeted category will join the Ever 6 cohort.
Children in local authority care and previously looked-after children, including those adopted from state care or who left through a special guardianship or child arrangements order.
Disadvantaged is the broader description used in school performance measures. It is the specific grant, tied to defined eligibility criteria. A pupil can face real disadvantage without meeting them, and that gap widens once expanded FSM begins.
No, pupil premium is not ring-fenced. Schools decide how to spend it, though every funded activity must sit within the menu of approaches and be set out in the published strategy.
Not within the financial year. Allocations are fixed to a census snapshot, so the next census picks up a mid-year arrival.
From September, governors will watch your free school meals numbers climb and reasonably assume the pupil premium grant climbs with them. It is a conversation to have early, before the next budget round starts. If you are planning intervention now, plan it for a cohort you already know will narrow.
DO YOU HAVE STUDENTS WHO NEED MORE SUPPORT IN MATHS?
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Explore our AI maths tutoring or find out about one to one tuition for your school.
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