Pupil Premium Eligible vs Pupil Premium Recipients and uploading Records from Get Information about Pupils (GIAP)

Read time: 15 minutes

What is the difference between Pupil Premium Eligible and Pupil Premium Recipient?

The Pupil Premium Eligible tag that can be found on a student's Student Profile is an indicator of whether a student may be eligible for Pupil Premium based on their background, such as receiving Free School Meals. The Pupil Premium Eligible tag may not be a true representation of who actually receives Pupil Premium funding in the school.

The Pupil Premium Recipient tag is used to identify exactly who is receiving Pupil Premium funding based on the official information uploaded to your site from Get Information about Pupils (see the section below). This is the field you should use to analyse your current Pupil Premium students as it is the official tag for Pupil Premium.

In some cases, a student with the Pupil Premium Recipient tag may no longer be eligible for Pupil Premium.

Why does Pupil Premium work like this? 

The distinction between Pupil Premium Eligible and Pupil Premium Recipient is designed to enable schools to see students they’ve received funding for vs those the school is supporting before funds are received.

• Track mismatching data - Track where a parent may have flagged their child is eligible for free school meals, but this hasn't come through in the file. It provides a way to identify what steps might be needed e.g. mum needs to complete relevant paperwork so you get the funding.
• Save time inputting background data - As Pupil Premium data isn't sent in CTFs, but records of (for example) Free School Meals are, we automatically set Pupil Premium without the need to tick a box.
• Updates - If the DfE change the eligibility criteria for Pupil Premium, we will update the Arbor system for you.

What happens when Pupil Premium Recipient status expires?

Each Pupil Premium Recipients file has an end date. This means that students will no longer flag as a Pupil Premium Recipient until the next upload.

To enable you to report on your Pupil Premium students, make sure all your students have had their Background Indicators recorded correctly - you can see how to do this here: How to set a student as Pupil Premium

If the student no longer has any of the background details that would enable them to be in receipt of Pupil Premium (shown in the DfE guides here), they will not meet the criteria and will no longer appear as Pupil Premium.

When can I set Pupil Premium Recipients? 

The data is only released three times a year (in March, June and September), so you'll need to wait until the files are released to get the most up-to-date information.

Important Update(s)

Error Message - Uploaded File not Formatted as a Pupil Premium Recipients File

The DfE have recently made a change to the file that is generated on Get Information About Pupils. 

For Academic Years 2024/2025 onwards, the file now contains a column called Sex, which was previously called Gender. 

Following this change, we have updated our systems to read a column called Sex. 

The DfE has not backdated this change such as 2023/2024 and this spreadsheet still contains the old column called Gender. 

As a result, when you try and import this spreadsheet you will see an error stating that the file is not in a valid format. 

To resolve:

1. Open the file .csv file in an editor such as Microsoft Excel

2. Edit the column name from Gender to Sex

3. Save the file as a .csv 

4. Upload the new file to Arbor this will upload successfully

Where can I see Pupil Premium Recipients?

As the Pupil Premium Eligible tag only represents possible eligibility of Pupil Premium, using the Pupil Premium Recipient tag is the best way to judge who is actually receiving Pupil Premium.

You can see where you can report on these students here: See a list of Pupil Premium students

Uploading Pupil Premium Recipient Records

You can upload and tag the official recipients of the Pupil Premium using the Official DfE files received from GIAP.

Permissions

If you don't have the correct permissions ask your school administrator to update them - follow these instructions.

As Pupil Premium Recipient status is allocated from the DfE after each Census, the GIAP Report is correct unless any revisions are made - in which case you can reimport the report from them or await the new data from the DfE after your next Census. This will allow you to see the Pupil Premium Recipient tag on their student profile.

Firstly make sure that you have downloaded the file from GIAP and that this is saved on your computer before you start.

Then go to Student > All Students > Bulk Update > Pupil Premium Recipients. The page explains how to get the Pupil Premium file and how to use GIAP to download and search for students.

Click on the green Show UPN List to get a list of all UPN's of students currently enrolled in your school.

Don't worry if your report from GIAP has students in last year's year groups or forms! This is because GIAP works within the financial year and the forms on this report are from when the report was generated. When you put this information in Arbor it will add the information to the correct children and they will remain within their correct form in Arbor.

Once you have the file click +Add button. This will open a slide over where you can upload your file. Once you have browsed and added the file from your computer, click on the green 'Upload' button to continue.

This will then generate a list of all the students in the file you uploaded. To create the Pupil Premium Recipient, records click on the green Confirm upload button. Until you have confirmed the upload, students will not be marked as Pupil Premium Recipients in Arbor.

Why can't I see the data?

If you import a file prior to the end of the financial year, you won't see Pupil Premium information on student profiles, and won't be able to view the import until you have added the next academic year on your site. This is because the Pupil Premium data is tagged to a certain financial year.

For example, when importing a file for March, the data will show once April starts, because that's thge start of the new financial year.