Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to help tackle inequalities in education outcomes in (a) Coventry North East constituency, (b) Coventry, (c) the West Midlands and (d) England.

Enabling every child, irrespective of their background, to realise their potential at school has been at the centre of this government’s education policy since 2010. The department is committed to supporting all disadvantaged pupils in England and has put in place several significant policy measures to help schools address the barriers to success that these pupils face. Since 2011, we have been providing extra funding, £2.6 billion this year alone, through the pupil premium, for school leaders to boost the progress and attainment of their disadvantaged pupils.

Information about allocations of pupil premium at a national, local authority and parliamentary constituency level is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/pupil-premium-allocations-and-conditions-of-grant-2021-to-2022.

More than £6.82 million of pupil premium funding is being allocated to eligible schools in the Coventry North East constituency over the course of the 2021/22 financial year.

Schools in the Coventry local authority are being allocated pupil premium funding of nearly £18.5 million in the 2021/22 financial year. Eligible schools in the West Midlands will receive over £327 million.

To ensure schools have the tools to make effective use of this funding, the department established the £137 million Education Endowment Foundation. It carries out extensive research to produce guidance reports for schools setting out how they can use the additional funding to best improve their disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes.

In addition to protecting pupil premium funding rates, the department has announced additional funding of nearly £5 billion since June 2020 to support education recovery for children and young people in schools, colleges and early years education providers.

Recovery programmes have been designed to allow early years, school and college leaders to support those pupils most in need, including the most disadvantaged. We have also expanded our reforms in two areas where the evidence is clear that our investment will have a significant impact for disadvantaged children: high quality tutoring and great teaching.

Education recovery programmes include the Catch Up Premium and Recovery Premium, with funding worth over £1.9 billion for the 2020/21 to 2023/24 academic years. Recovery Premium allocations are based on pupil premium eligibility and can be used by schools on evidence-based activities to support those who need it most.

Schools in Coventry will receive Recovery Premium funding worth nearly £1 million over the current academic year, further helping to tackle inequalities in education outcomes.

The £1.5 billion for tutoring will allow us to provide up to 100 million tutoring hours for children and young people across England by 2024. This will expand high-quality tutoring in every part of country so that small group tuition is available to every child who needs help catching up, not just those who can afford it.