Ofsted: pupil premium 'failing to raise standards' The conclusions will be seen as a blow to Nick Clegg, the Deputy Prime Minister, who has repeatedly championed the pupil premium as evidence of successful Liberal Democrat policymaking. Under the reforms, each school is handed around £600 in additional funding for each pupil from poor homes. Children are eligible if they claim free school meals or are in the care of social services. But a survey of 262 schools found that many were simply using it to "maintain or enhance existing provision" rather than "put in place new initiatives." "Only one in 10 school leaders said tat the pupil premium had significantly changed the way that they supported pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds," said Ofsted. More than four-in-10 spent the money on additional teaching assistants, despite claims from Sir Michael that support staff only had a limited impact on school standards. "The big issue is that this money is for our poorest children to ensure that they achieve as well as others who come from more privileged backgrounds, it is simply not good enough for heads of schools to say that it is not changing policy," he said. We will be very critical of those schools that are not thinking long and hard about the use of the pupil premium. A Department for Education spokesman said: "It's unacceptable that children from disadvantaged backgrounds are less likely to do well in school than their peers. The Coalition Government has introduced the pupil premium to tackle this problem. We have given schools the freedom to use the additional funding in innovative ways. However, it is vital they use it to boost results for the most disadvantaged pupils, drawing on the large amount of evidence on how to make the biggest difference. The pupil premium has only been in place for one year, but we welcome this early report by Ofsted and their recommendation that schools need to use the premium properly. Kevin Brennan, Labour's Shadow Schools Minister, said: "A year and a half after being introduced, this report shows that the pupil premium is not working in the way it was intended, because it fails to offset the cuts the Tory-led Government has made to the schools budget."