Follow the conference on X #PupilPremium
“Children’s outcomes are still – too often and too much – determined by background or circumstances, and this has led to a failure to close attainment gaps. We see attainment gaps between children emerge before school and widen as they progress through their education.”
Every Child Achieving and Thriving White Paper, February 2026
Recent national data continues to highlight a persistent and, in some areas, widening attainment gap between disadvantaged pupils and their peers. The Government’s new ambition to halve this gap places renewed emphasis on how schools identify need, target funding with precision and demonstrate measurable impact. There is also increasing focus on specific underperforming cohorts, including white working-class pupils, alongside growing scrutiny of how disadvantage funding is allocated, monitored and evaluated. With the Department for Education signalling potential reform to the way disadvantage funding is targeted, schools must ensure their strategies are evidence-informed, sharply focused and ready for increased accountability.
This timely conference is designed to help school leaders move beyond compliance towards demonstrable impact. Through expert-led sessions and practical case studies, you will explore how to align pupil premium spending with clearly defined barriers, refine your approach to precision targeting, and ensure that every funding decision contributes meaningfully to narrowing the attainment gap. The programme will examine how to prepare for evolving inspection expectations, how to use data intelligently to identify hidden underperformance, and how to embed high-impact practice across the whole school.
You will leave the day with greater clarity, confidence and strategic direction, equipped to strengthen your pupil premium strategy in a changing policy landscape. At a time of sustained financial pressure and heightened accountability, ensuring that disadvantage funding delivers measurable improvement has never been more important.
Who should attend?
Headteachers, Assistant Heads, Deputy Heads, School Business Managers, Head of Pupil Premium, Heads of Inclusion, Pupil Premium Co-ordinators, SENDCOs and other staff with involvement in pupil premium spend.
This conference will enable you to:
Understand the national ambition to halve the disadvantage gap and what it means for school leaders
Strengthen your disadvantage strategy through sharper, needs-led targeting of pupil premium funding
Prepare for increased accountability and evolving expectations around inspection and funding reform
Align spending decisions clearly with identified barriers and measurable gap reduction
Develop precision approaches to tackling persistent absence and underperformance
Use community insight to refine disadvantage strategy and improve targeting
Implement evidence-informed, high-impact teaching strategies that disproportionately benefit disadvantaged pupils
Monitor and evaluate impact with clarity, moving beyond provision to demonstrable outcomes
Ensure your pupil premium strategy statement evidences coherence, precision and measurable success
Future-proof your provision in anticipation of potential changes to disadvantage funding models
“Concerningly, not only are disadvantage gaps for 11- and 16-year-olds at their widest levels since 2011, we are seeing worrying trends for children just starting school. That gaps at age five are widening across disadvantaged and vulnerable groups – as well as being at record levels for children with SEND – highlights the scale and breadth of challenges facing schools and the importance of the earliest years of life.”
Emily Hunt, Associate Director for social mobility and vulnerable learners, Education Policy Institute (EPI)
“The stark reality is that in the post-pandemic era we are moving backwards as a society. All the key indicators of social mobility are flashing red – widening education divides are driven by a perfect storm of rising child poverty, persistent school absenteeism and deepening financial hardship among our university students.”
Lee Elliot Major, a professor of social mobility at the University of Exeter
“Schools are already facing increased challenges due to the impact of the cost of living. The new Government should aim to develop a long-term strategy that would have a particular focus on very low attaining pupils and closing the disadvantage gap. To do this, it is essential that schools are both adequately funded and supported to do so using evidence-based approaches.”
Dr Ben Styles, NFER’s Head of Classroom Practice
