Schools in Cambridgeshire stand to lose more than £1 million after the government’s decision to change the method of calculating pupil premium funding.

Pupil premium is designed to allow schools to help more disadvantaged pupils by improving their progress and the exam results they achieve. Primary schools receive £1,345 per pupil and secondaries get £955.

But in this time of pandemic, Ministers decided to base funding on the number of pupils who had free school meal in October, rather than January as in previous years.

This means that the 990 pupils who became eligible after the November lockdown and Christmas restrictions hit household budgets will miss out on this support.

Daniel Zeichner MP said: “This Conservative Government had to be shamed into feeding kids on free school meals in the holidays, now their cutting funding to support them in school. Cambridgeshire schools are missing out on an estimated £1138500 to help children on  recover learning and wellbeing post-pandemic. Its really not good enough.”