Baroness Smith of Malvern (Lab)

My noble friend is right of course about the importance of the contribution to learning. I think it is hard to envisage how children can focus on the learning that needs to happen without having nutritious, good food inside them both first thing in the morning from our breakfast clubs and of course at lunchtime as well. The important point about the pupil premium, as my noble friend will know very well, is that, while it has been allocated and designated on the basis of individual pupils’ entitlements, it is spent within schools on a range of different activities. It is not attached to a single pupil. That is why I think the Government will want to undertake some serious thinking about how to maintain and improve the support that is available for ensuring that children who come from disadvantaged backgrounds get the support in schools that they can, without depending in the long term on the link to entitlement for free school meals. Of course, in the short term, not least because free school meal entitlement based on the current criteria lasts for six years, there will be a considerable amount of time when that could be used to allocate pupil premium, but there needs to be work on ensuring that funding for disadvantage can continue for students to be used as effectively as possible by schools.