Guidance

Guidance for completing and returning the 14 to 16-year-old pupil premium and free school meals form for the 2023 to 2024 academic year

Published 3 November 2023

Applies to England

1. Introduction

This guidance helps you complete the return for pupil premium and free school meals for 14 to 16-year-olds.

Use this form to report the number of 14 to 16-year-old students in your institution who are eligible for free school meals, pupil premium, and service pupil premium in the 2023 to 2024 academic year.

Further education and sixth form colleges can enrol students aged 14 to 16 on a full-time study programme and receive funding from the Education and Skills Funding Agency (ESFA). Such programmes include the study of technical qualifications, alongside general qualifications, including English and mathematics, within the key stage 4 curriculum.

For the purposes of this guidance, references to colleges do not include academies for 16 to 19-year-olds, as these are outside the scope of this provision.

More information on pupil premium for 14 to 16-year-olds is detailed in the guidance document Full-time enrolment of 14 to 16-year-olds in further education and sixth form colleges.

2. Who is this guidance for

This guidance is for further education and sixth form colleges.

3. When to complete your submission

The deadline to complete your return is 5pm on Friday, 1 December 2023.

4. Accessing the form

Access the free meals and pupil premium digital form  to complete your return.

4.1 Before you start

Make sure you have:

• read this guidance
• a DfE Sign-in account
• the total of 14 to 16-year-old students enrolled at your institution as on 1 November 2023
• the number of 14 to 16-year-old students who are eligible for pupil premium, free school meals, the service premium and care leavers

4.2 DfE Sign-in

Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account

Follow the below steps to access your DfE Sign-In account:

1. When prompted, enter your DfE Sign-in credentials (your username and password) for authentication
2. Choose the organisation for whom you are completing the form
3. The next page will display the details we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed in. This will show the name, address and URN or UKPRN of the organisation, as well as the name and email address of the person who signed into DfE Sign-in
4. If these details are correct, then all you need do is to select ‘Continue’ to go to the next page
5. If you believe these details are incorrect, please complete the ESFA online enquiries form and we will investigate. You can still proceed with your submission
6. Complete the form as instructed

Your account must be connected to the organisation you are completing the form for. You do not need to add any services in DfE Sign-in; it is used for authentication only.

If you do not have a DfE Sign-in account

You will need to create an account by following steps 1 to 5 below:

1. Select ‘create a DfE Sign-in account’ the DfE Sign-in page
2. Enter your name and email address (use a valid business email address that contains your name)
3. We will send you an email to verify your email address; copy the code from this email and paste it into the box on the verification page
4. Create a memorable password of 8 characters or more. Your password must include 2 uppercase letters, 2 lowercase letters, and 2 numbers
5. Sign in using your new credentials, and request access to the organisation for which you would like to submit a claim. Your request will be sent to the approver(s) at your organisation for action

You might have noticed the term ‘approver’ when creating your account. An approver is someone at your organisation responsible for controlling who has access to DfE Sign-in and the services within the system. It’s usually a senior person, such as an administrator or a manager.

For security reasons, you will need the approval of one of your organisation’s approvers before you can access the form.

Once your request to access an organisation has been approved, you can follow the steps outlined under the ‘Sign in to your DfE Sign-in account’ section.

4.3 If you need further assistance

If you are having problems using the DfE Sign-in service, use our DfE Sign-in help service. You will be able to request further assistance if required. When raising a support request, select ‘other.’

If you have problems accessing the form, please contact us via the ESFA help centre.

5.  Completing the form

There is a ‘save and continue’ button at the bottom of each page. Clicking on this button will take you to the next page. The form will remember information you have saved if you sign out of the form or if you leave it open for an extended period.

You will also be advised what will happen next once you have submitted the form.

5.1  Your details

We will show you the information we hold about the organisation you selected when you signed into your DfE Sign-in.

5.2 Total students

14 to 16-year-old students are defined as those who were aged 14 or 15 on 31 August 2023, and are enrolled at the college directly.

This will not include 14 to 16-year-olds enrolled at a school or other institution studying at the college for some of their provision nor will it include 14 to 16-year-olds who have achieved a level 2 qualification and have chosen to enrol on a level 3 programme.

5.3 Free school meals students

This includes those students recorded in the October 2022 school census who are known to have been eligible for free school meals since May 2017 (known as ‘ever 6’).
This also includes those first known to be eligible as at October 2022.

5.4 Care leaver students

This includes students recorded in the January 2022 school census and alternative provision census who were looked after by an English or Welsh local authority immediately before being adopted.

This also includes students who left local authority care on a special guardianship order or child arrangements order (previously known as a residence order).

5.5 Pupil premium students

Students that are eligible for pupil premium are those:

• entitled to free school meals. This will include those students recorded in the October 2022 school census who are known to have been eligible for free school meals since May 2017, as well as those first known to be eligible as at October 2022
• no longer eligible for free school meals but have claimed free school meals during the past 6 years (known as ‘ever 6’)
• in care, or have left care through adoption or other formal legal routes such as a child arrangements or special guardianship order

If a student is eligible under more than one category, then they must be counted only once.

Your answer must be less than or equal to the total number of free school meal and care leaver students provided.

5.6 Service premium students

Students eligible for the service premium are those who were recorded in the October 2022 school census and have been eligible for the service child premium since the January 2017 school census.

Those students recorded as a service child for the first time on the October 2022 census should also be counted.

Institutions should also include any student whose parent has died in service, where they are now in receipt of pensions under the Armed Forces Compensation Scheme (AFCS) and the War Pensions Scheme (WPS).

5.7 Declarations page

You must complete the declarations. You will not be able to submit your form without completing this section fully.

5.8 Submission summary

There is a summary page so that you can check all your answers before submitting the form on behalf of your organisation. You can change your answers by using the ‘change’ link that appears next to each data entry.

You can also save your submission summary by clicking ‘save summary as PDF’ before you submit it. If you are unable to see your submission summary within the PDF, you can download it by following these steps:

1. At the summary page, select ‘file’ and then ‘print’ option, a new window will pop up
2. From the dropdown, select ‘save as PDF’
3. Click on the ‘save’ button

5.9  Confirmation

The final page confirms your submission and shows a unique reference number. Make a note of your reference number as we will not include this information in your confirmation email.

We will send an email to confirm we have received your submission to the email address you provided.

5.10 Amending your submission

You can make changes to and resubmit your form up until 5pm on Friday, 1 December 2023. To do this, you will need to sign in and resubmit the form.

You cannot amend your submission after the submission window has closed. We will use your latest submission as final. We will not grant any extensions to the deadline.

6. Enquiries

If you have read this guidance and have any questions, please contact us via the ESFA help centre.