Why the Reclassification of Free School Meals Matters

Why the reclassification of Free School Meals matters

In an apparently casual manner the Department for Education has reclassified the way in which we measure students as part of the key Free School Meals (FSM) measure.  Before , it was simply a matter of whether a child was in receipt of them.  Now a new measure is being introduced by the DfE, at the same time as they implement two other policies:  the massive expansion of the academies programme and the "Pupil Premium" which awards money to schools based on the number of students there classified as FSM.  I hope to show what the consequences of these apparently unrelated policies will be in a year or two's time.

What does reclassification mean?

As shown here and elsewhere (Row 124 of the KS2 data), "the key DfE measure of free school meals changed this year, from the % of students currently eligible for FSM to the % of students whose families had been eligible in last six years."

On the surface this would seem to simply increase the money awardable via the Pupil Premium.  However, there are other forces at work here.  Let's imagine a scenario shall we?  Say a family which had undergone some hardship in the last few years (not many haven't) but are now back on the road out of poverty, or are even relatively prosperous.  

The government's own data shows that in 2011, at the average "good" school, 51.2% of pupils got five or more A* to C grades, the commonly used benchmark for success of a school.  This compares to 27.8% of FSM students attaining at the same level at a similarly average "good" school.  This offers us concrete evidence, using the Government and the mainstream media's favoured method for calculating success, that impoverished students perform almost half as well in final exams. (Whether you accept that this kind of quantitative data is of any use or interest is of course up to you, the point is that many voters do.)

What the reclassification means is that students who have been impoverished at any point in the last six years will now count towards these statistics, even if they are not now.  There is, therefore, only one way in which the statistics can go in light of this reclassification: up.  Students who have been historically poor will stay poor and achieve as they would have anyway, whereas students whose home lives are improving will stay on the books as convenient success stories.

A couple of predictions

I would predict that either this year or the year after the DfE will release figures showing that the Pupil Premium has been devastatingly successful in raising attainment of its target groups.  I would also predict that no mention of the changes to how FSM pupils are classified will be mentioned.  Finally, I would also predict that the Academies programme will be cited as a further success given their 'rigour', 'tenacity', 'dedication' and other inkhorn adjectives with regard to the implementation of the Pupil Premium.

So, for a tiny extra spend, the DfE has guaranteed a jump in its figures whilst cutting liberally elsewhere, a fact which I have not seen reported widely, and so put down here that I might bring it to the attention of others.  It only took the alteration of one formula on a Whitehall spreadsheet.