FREE meals have served up nearly £300,000 in extra funding for schools in the county.

Hoople did its homework to make a claim for the sum add up.

The test assessed over 2,000 pupils from 46 schools to identify additional pupil premium needs.

The pupil premium provides additional resources for potentially disadvantaged children and has to be accounted for by individual schools.

Pupils who needed this funding had previously been identified by  the former free school meals entitlement.

With all Key Stage 1 pupils now entitled to a free hot meal, schools needed a new way of identifying additional pupil premium funding.

Over the summer holiday, Hoople, Herefordshire Council's "arm's length" support services company,  adapted specific government criteria to draw up an assessment form sent out to parents.

Responses were then forwarded on to Hoople to process on behalf of schools.

All told, 216 pupils were identified as being entitled to the pupil premium.

Additionally, 26 per cent of these pupils were already at school but had not been identified as eligible for the premium payment.

 As such, the schools were missing out on this funding which could then be used to support the children with their learning even more.

Jo Davidson, Director of Children’s Wellbeing for Herefordshire Council, said Hoople had done "excellent" work.

"This assessment has meant that the schools concerned are entitled to a share of an additional £280,800 of funding in 2015/16 and that this payment will continue for every Primary School year.

"Going forward, schools will only need to complete assessments for their new intake of reception pupils," she said.

Leominster Primary was one of the schools to use the assessment.
 
There, bursar Sandra Beaumont-Pike said an additional 16 children had been identified as eligible for free school meals, which meant a "large amount" of additional funding for the school.

"This funding is widely beneficial for our school as it enables us to offer a larger range of learning opportunities and experiences for the children," she said.

The progress of pupils from poorer families in Herefordshire is recognised locally and nationally as not as high as it should be.

Herefordshire Council’s overview and scrutiny committee (OSC) is preparing an inquiry as to why.

It is, however, unlikely that the inquiry will get underway ahead of the council election in May.

OSC already intends to assess the application of pupil premium funding in county schools.

Ofsted pays particular attention to the use of the premium and its impact on pupil outcomes.

In 2010, international antipoverty charity Save the Children cited the county’s run of record GCSE scores as revealing a growing “education gap” trapping pupils from poorer families into limited achievements and expectations.

By then, both the council and the Diocese of Hereford were acknowledging inequalities in pupil performance countywide and have long been fighting for more money with the county historically amongst the worst funded per pupil in the country.

Average per pupil funding in the county has hovered around £4,000.