The Covid pandemic has exposed the extent to which pupil premium funding does not support the wider work that schools do to support children living in poverty or struggling with difficult issues at home, according to this new report by the Institute of Education.
It found that families were heavily reliant on schools to cope during the pandemic, and that this highlights fundamental weaknesses in our current welfare system that urgently need repair.
Some schools were impacted by sudden and unexpected changes caused by the pandemic, with one school hugely affected by the closure of an important local employer, leading to an increase in families' need for food and support.
While some schools had a high proportion of pupils eligible for free school meals, others with a low proportion of families entitled to FSM faced different pressures.
A school with amongst the lowest proportion of families entitled to FSM reported pressure during the first lockdown from some parents for the kind of synchronous, small-group online provision they associated with private schools, and the levels of home resourcing private schooling implies, the report says.