George Osborne steals Lib Dem clothes

One of the most cherished policies for Team Clegg is the pupil premium - a lump sum to be given to schools for each disadvantaged pupil. Dreamt up by Ed Davey and driven through by David Laws, it will doubtless appear in Saturday's inaugural leader's speech. Make no mistake, it's one of the ones they are really proud of.

So with the sort of mischevous twinkle for which he is famed, George Osborne dropped in that, oh, by the way, this is now Tory policy too. "We want to see a pupil premium payment... that would go to schools to attract poorer children, to open these pupils' eyes to the opportunities available to their classmates." This comes a day after David Cameron went on ID cards, a Clegg biggie, at PMQs. The new leader may only have been in place a few weeks, but water-muddying has begun in earnest. Watch this space.

Comments

The pupil premium is actually a core element of the Conservative Party's education reform agenda, which was set out in the Green Paper (‘Raising the bar, closing the gap’) published in November 2007. The paper set out a bold and detailed plan for supply-side reform in the education sector - designed to raise school standards, create more good school places and make opportunity more equal.

Here's the relevant section from the green paper:

"We have proposed an explicit Pupil Premium to increase per capita funding for pupils from deprived backgrounds (recommended by the Conservative Public Services Improvement Policy Group). We believe that the Pupil Premium should attach to pupils directly. New Academies, like existing Academies and other schools within the maintained system, will thus be incentivised to seek out and accept pupils from more challenging backgrounds."

http://www.conservatives.com/pdf/New%20opportunity_proof.pdf

[Empedocles]

Actually, Gove outlined it even before the Green Paper. From his 2007 Conference speech:

"And to ensure that our reforms are targeted to help those most in need, we will change the funding rules so that those schools which accept more pupils from disadvantaged background receive more money."