Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding has been allocated to each North West local education authority in round one of the strategic school improvement fund.

The Departmental regions were reconfigured in 2014 with the appointment of Regional Schools Commissioners. The Lancashire and West Yorkshire region covers much of what was previously recognised as the North West.

One local authority in the Lancashire and West Yorkshire region is a lead applicant in a successful Round 1 application to the Strategic School Improvement Fund (SSIF). This is Blackburn with Darwen and the bid is worth approximately £195,000.

Schools in a further 12 local authorities in the Lancashire and West Yorkshire region will receive funding from Round 1 of the SSIF, either as named providers, or because there are successful applications supporting schools in their areas. The sum total of this additional support is approximately £4 million.

In addition to the SSIF, the School Improvement Monitoring and Brokering Grant of £50 million per year is being provided to local authorities to allow them to continue to monitor performance of maintained schools, broker school improvement provision, and intervene as appropriate. Approximately £5.25 million has been paid to local authorities in the Lancashire and West Yorkshire region from the first allocation of this grant, covering the period from September 2017 to March 2018.