Things are getting… kind of expensive these days, aren’t they?  

Especially when it comes to school supplies and support resources – with more learners than ever before having an identified neurodiversity like dyslexia and children all across the UK negatively impacted by learning loss due to pandemic school closures, we’re in a bit of a situation when it comes to making sure everyone has the tools they need to thrive. 

But, if you’re a publicly-funded school in the UK, there are several dedicated funding blocks and grants designed to help you support your students. So today, we’ll be looking at two different ways to fund reading support and how to make the most of those allocations: pupil premium funding and the Dedicated Schools Grant (DSG).  

What is pupil premium funding?  

Pupil premium funding is grant-style education funding allocated to publicly funded schools by the Department for Education (DfE).  

It’s designed to facilitate schools in increasing social mobility and reducing the gap in achievement between students from disadvantaged backgrounds and their peers. See it as a financial means of accelerating progress and raising attainment, but specifically for a subset of learners who might not achieve their targeted outcomes due to factors beyond their – and their schools’ – control.  

Schools receive pupil premium funding for each pupil who’s classed as coming from a disadvantaged background (i.e. having Free School Meals status, or being looked-after). But it’s not a case of individual pupils receiving individual allocations of cash: schools can use pupil premium funding in a far more flexible way, in whichever way that school considers to be in the best interests of those students. 

But there are limits to that flexibility. It works this way because schools are in the best position to understand what additional provision needs to happen in their setting to ensure that the largest number of students possible achieve their learning goals. And they’re held accountable for the ways pupil premium funding has been spent, too, and the impact that it’s had on learning outcomes for the pupils who it’s designed to support. 

Although pupil premium funding is only for schools, there is an additional programme that ensures the scheme carries on for looked-after children and care leavers aged 16 and over, called Pupil Premium Funding Plus. And during the pandemic, schools could also benefit from an additional block of recovery pupil premium funding, to mitigate the impact of Covid-19 on learning, which has since been closed (…although pandemic learning needs remain).  

Each student who is eligible for pupil premium funding for the 2025-2026 school year makes their school eligible for: 

£1,515 per year for each eligible primary-aged student (those who are eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) now or within the last 6 school years) 

£1,075 per year for each eligible secondary-aged student (those who are eligible for Free School Meals (FSM) now or within the last 6 school years) 

£2,360 per year for children currently looked after by the local authority (this funding is paid directly to the local authority) 

£350 per year for each student eligible for Service Pupil Premium Funding (for children with parents in the Armed Services). 

Some schools will have a relatively low amount of pupil premium funding students on their rolls, whereas others in areas with high deprivation rates will have rolls almost entirely made up of those who receive pupil premium funding. It all depends on the individual socio-economic situation of each student’s individual household, but as a rule, less affluent boroughs in London and parts of the North East and North West tend to top the charts for schools with the highest percentage of students eligible for pupil premium funding.  

How can a school make the most of pupil premium funding? 

We know that one of the most pressing concerns when it comes to students who come from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds is literacy. And without literacy, learning can’t happen: students need a developed reading skill set in order to access the work in front of them and make the most of the learning opportunities on hand.  

Students from socio-economically disadvantaged backgrounds have some of the lowest literacy levels of all: a third of students leave school without fundamental reading skills, but for those from disadvantaged backgrounds, this increases to more than half. 

Investing in tools that unlock literacy is one of the most important ways to make the most of pupil premium funding because without strong reading skills, grades fall out of reach and futures get compromised for the learners who’ve already had a tougher start to their academic careers than their peers. 

So how can schools use pupil premium funding to buy reading pens? 

Schools have to use their pupil premium funding across three broad areas: 

✔️ To support high-quality teaching, such as staff professional development  

✔️ To provide targeted academic support, such as tutoring  

✔️ To tackle non-academic barriers to academic success, such as attendance, behaviour and social and emotional wellbeing.  

Reading pens like C-Pen Reader 3 count as targeted academic support. And they can have a huge positive impact on students with reading needs, from those with Special Educational Needs like dyslexia to those impacted by the pandemic or low confidence, who simply need extra support to read at their age level. The reading pen implementation support and certification achieved by taking part in one of Scanning Pens’ Pilot Programs is staff professional development, too.  

So your school can spend Pupil Premium funding on reading pens, as long as they follow the Department for Education’s official requirements and process.  

Here’s what you need to do: 

✔️ Identify student needs: Assess whether disadvantaged students face barriers that a reading pen could address such as difficulties with reading or accessing the curriculum (they do, and it does). 

✔️ Consult the evidence: Ensure the purchase aligns with the DfE’s ‘menu of approaches’ and is supported by evidence that it will improve educational outcomes for those pupils. Here’s some.  

✔️ Plan, plan, and document: Include the intended purchase and its rationale in the school’s Pupil Premium funding strategy statement. This statement must be published and updated annually, showing how the funding will be used to address identified needs and improve outcomes. 

✔️ Monitor the impact: Track and evaluate the effectiveness of the reading pen in supporting disadvantaged pupils’ progress, and be prepared to report on its impact as part of the school’s regular Pupil Premium funding reviews. 

Better grades and reading confidence? All in the bag, with C-Pen Reader 3. Or C-Pen Reader 2, if you’re looking for Wi-Fi-free scanning for your setting. Or C-Pen Exam Reader 2, if learners want to use it in exams as an access arrangement.  

Simple!  

But how else can I fund reading pens in my school? 

This is where DSG – the dedicated schools grant – comes in.  

The dedicated schools grant is the main pot of money that the government gives to local councils each year to pay for schools and some other educational services. It’s ringfenced, which means it can only be used for education and nothing else. Some of it is kept by the council to pay for things like extra support for students with SEN and central services, but most of the money ends up in schools to pay for staff, equipment and running costs.  

The council decides how to share out this resource following a consultation with local school representatives (a Schools Forum). 

The dedicated schools grant is split into four main blocks:  

➡️ The Schools Block: money for mainstream primary and secondary schools. 

➡️ The Early Years Block: money for nurseries and childcare for young children. 

➡️ The High Needs Block: money for children and young people who need extra support, like those with special educational needs and disabilities. 

➡️ The Central Schools Services Block: money for the things that the council does for all schools, like managing admissions.  

But there are variations on standard practice: if a school becomes an academy, the government sends its share of the dedicated schools grant directly to the academy, and takes that amount off what the council gets (a policy known as ‘recoupment’). 

And is high needs funding on the rise? 

Yes. For the 2025–26 financial year, dedicated schools grant funding for mainstream schools increased by 2.15% per pupil, bringing the total national allocation to £48.7 billion – meaning that you’ll see more of it filtering through your school this year.  

Do I need to use the high needs funding block to buy reading pens? 

You can use the high needs funding block to buy reading pens. But that isn’t the only way to use the dedicated schools grant to make learners’ reading goals happen:  

✔️ The High Needs Block: This block of funding is ideal for supporting pupils with EHCPs or additional learning needs to get better outcomes. This can prevent a rise in disengagement, mental health challenges and behaviour-related exclusions for neurodivergent learners, and improve outcomes for one of the classroom demographics most impacted by pandemic school closures.  

✔️ Schools Block: This block is for supporting struggling readers in mainstream classrooms, helping them to build a love for literacy and not fall behind the curriculum due to unmet reading needs. Those impacted include readers who need more confidence or have found it challenging to build their skills at the same rate as their peers. 

✔️ Early Years Block: And you can use this funding block to purchase reading pens for the purposes of supporting younger learners with early decoding, strengthening the phonics acquisition process, and building their confidence around the world of words. Intervention works best when it happens early, and you can’t really intervene early enough – and building the basics with a reading pen on-hand can head long-term literacy deficits off at the pass. 

We know it’s hard to resource enough reading support on your budget. 

There isn’t a newspaper in the UK that hasn’t reported on the financial crisis in schools: real-terms cash is down, pay rises are having to be found from other existing budgets, and whilst there are recruitment challenges cross-sector, it’s even more challenging to find a SENCo when your setting needs one. 

That’s why we’re created multiple ways to make it easier for your school to get our tech into the hands of the learners who need it.  

Check out our Reading Pen Costs Calculator to work out how much your school could save on human reading support this September – and if you’re worried about up-front finances, we now offer schools the opportunity to lease the reading pens they need from us in our new Leasing Programme, and spread the cost over a number of terms.  

And we know that as a teacher, you need to know that the tech you’re choosing works – no if, buts or maybes. That’s why we offer education settings a FREE reading pen trialor the chance to take part in one of our Pilot Programs, complete with baked-in implementation support and CPD – just get in touch with us using one of the links below to start yours. 

This September, we want to make sure you can focus on teaching – not balancing the books.  

📧 Drop us a line: ukinfo@scanningpens.com 

☎️ Give us a call: +44 (0) 207 976 4910