Supporting Disadvantaged Children

Motion as amended

Conference notes that:

1. The previous Conservative Government has left the education sector in a shocking state - with schools facing inadequate funding; headteachers struggling to recruit and retain staff; school buildings crumbling; and pupils' education being affected.
2. Children from less well-off homes start school already behind their classmates, and gaps only widen further through primary and secondary school.
3. The attainment gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and pupils who have never received free school meals has widened considerably following the pandemic and over 10 years of progress has been wiped out.
4. The attainment gap, which is based on average GCSE English and Maths attainment nationally, widened from 3.84 last year to 3.95 in the latest results from 2023, where a gap of zero would indicate that there is no difference between the average performance of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils.
5. By the end of secondary school (key stage 4), disadvantaged pupils are 19.2 months behind their peers - a gap which has widened since 2019 by 1.1 months.
6. The attainment gap has now widened every year since 2020.
7. Sir Kevan Collins, the then adviser to the former Conservative Government, acknowledged that children needed £15 billion to bridge the educational gap created by the pandemic but only a third of the recovery programme that Sir Kevan called for was delivered.
8. That funding for tutoring, through the National Tutoring Programme, will finish at the end of this academic year.

Conference further notes that:

1. Early years education for children below the age of four has a positive impact on the life chances of disadvantaged children, yet disadvantaged children spend significantly less time in pre-school than children from more affluent backgrounds.
2. Small group tutoring is highly effective and can give pupils four months' additional progress over the course of a year.
3. For every £1 spent on tutoring, £6.58 in economic returns is generated.
4. There are also many spill-over benefits of tutoring including improvements in children's confidence and school attendance.
5. The National Tutoring Programme had a positive impact on levelling out access to tutoring, with 35% of working-class Year 11 students receiving private or school-based tutoring, compared to 36% of students from professional homes.
6. Accessing tutoring through schools will be much harder from September as schools will be expected to pay themselves from Pupil Premium Funds.
7. The squeeze on school budgets will mean that many schools will be unable to continue offering tutoring.

Conference calls on the Government to:

1. Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year.
2. Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.
3. Introduce a 'Tutoring Guarantee' for every disadvantaged pupil who needs extra support which would:
   1. Be focused on prioritising children from low-income backgrounds, with low prior attainment or with additional needs or who are young carers.
   2. Enable an estimated 1.75 million disadvantaged young people each year to get additional tutoring help and support.
   3. Empower headteachers, who know their children the best, to set up tutoring in a way that works for them and their pupils, use their own teaching staff, recruiting tutors themselves or choosing from quality-assured external providers.
4. Introduce a Young People's Premium, extending Pupil Premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16-18.
5. Ensure no child is hungry in school by expanding free school meal eligibility to all children in poverty.
6. Introduce a Young Carers Pupil Premium so that schools have the proper resources to support pupils who are young carers.
7. The establishment of a Commissioner for Tackling Educational Disadvantage who shall be tasked with identifying centres of excellence for tackling the disadvantage gap, promoting best practice within the education sector and producing evidence led guidance on the effective spending of Pupil Premium funding.

Applicability: England only.

Motion prior to amendment

Submitted by: 11 party members
Mover: Munira Wilson MP (Spokesperson for Education and Families)
Summation: TBA

Conference notes that:

1. The previous Conservative Government has left the education sector in a shocking state - with schools facing inadequate funding; headteachers struggling to recruit and retain staff; school buildings crumbling; and pupils' education being affected.
2. Children from less well-off homes start school already behind their classmates, and gaps only widen further through primary and secondary school.
3. The attainment gap between pupils eligible for free school meals and pupils who have never received free school meals has widened considerably following the pandemic and over 10 years of progress has been wiped out.
4. The attainment gap, which is based on average GCSE English and Maths attainment nationally, widened from 3.84 last year to 3.95 in the latest results from 2023, where a gap of zero would indicate that there is no difference between the average performance of disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils.
5. By the end of secondary school (key stage 4), disadvantaged pupils are 19.2 months behind their peers - a gap which has widened since 2019 by 1.1 months.
6. The attainment gap has now widened every year since 2020.
7. Sir Kevan Collins, the then adviser to the former Conservative Government, acknowledged that children needed £15 billion to bridge the educational gap created by the pandemic but only a third of the recovery programme that Sir Kevan called for was delivered.
8. That funding for tutoring, through the National Tutoring Programme, will finish at the end of this academic year.

Conference further notes that:

1. Early years education for children below the age of four has a positive impact on the life chances of disadvantaged children, yet disadvantaged children spend significantly less time in pre-school than children from more affluent backgrounds.
2. Small group tutoring is highly effective and can give pupils four months' additional progress over the course of a year.
3. For every £1 spent on tutoring, £6.58 in economic returns is generated.
4. There are also many spill-over benefits of tutoring including improvements in children's confidence and school attendance.
5. The National Tutoring Programme had a positive impact on levelling out access to tutoring, with 35% of working-class Year 11 students receiving private or school-based tutoring, compared to 36% of students from professional homes.
6. Accessing tutoring through schools will be much harder from September as schools will be expected to pay themselves from Pupil Premium Funds.
7. The squeeze on school budgets will mean that many schools will be unable to continue offering tutoring.

Conference calls on the Government to:

1. Invest in high-quality early years education and close the attainment gap by giving disadvantaged children aged three and four an extra five free hours a week and tripling the Early Years Pupil Premium to £1,000 a year.
2. Increase school and college funding per pupil above the rate of inflation every year.
3. Introduce a 'Tutoring Guarantee' for every disadvantaged pupil who needs extra support which would:
   1. Be focused on prioritising children from low-income backgrounds, with low prior attainment or with additional needs.
   2. Enable an estimated 1.75 million disadvantaged young people each year to get additional tutoring help and support.
   3. Empower headteachers, who know their children the best, to set up tutoring in a way that works for them and their pupils, use their own teaching staff, recruiting tutors themselves or choosing from quality-assured external providers.
4. Introduce a Young People's Premium, extending Pupil Premium funding to disadvantaged young people aged 16-18.
5. Ensure no child is hungry in school by expanding free school meal eligibility to all children in poverty.

Applicability: England only.

Amendments

Amendment One

PASSED

Submitted by: West Suffolk
Mover: Andy McGowan
Summation: Helen Korfanty

In 3. a) (line 61), after ‘needs’ insert ‘or who are young carers’.

After 5. (line 73), insert:

6. Introduce a Young Carers Pupil Premium so that schools have the proper resources to support pupils who are young carers.

Amendment Two

PASSED

Submitted by: 13 members
Mover: Callum Robertson.
Summation: Rob Herd.

After 5. (line 73), insert:

6. The establishment of a Commissioner for Tackling Educational Disadvantage who shall be tasked with identifying centres of excellence for tackling the disadvantage gap, promoting best practice within the education sector and producing evidence led guidance on the effective spending of Pupil Premium funding

­

Mover: 7 minutes; summation of motion and movers and summation of any amendments: 4 minutes; all other speakers: 3 minutes. For eligibility and procedure for speaking in this debate, see page 8 of the agenda. 

The deadline for amendments to this motion, see pages 10–11, and for requests for separate votes, see pages 7–8 of the agenda, is 09.00 Thursday 12 September. Those selected for debate will be printed in Conference Extra and Saturday’s Conference Daily.