Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to raise attainment levels for disadvantaged students in (a) Leicester, (b) the East Midlands and (c) England.

The ‘Every child achieving and thriving’ White Paper establishes our plan to improve the outcomes of all children, building on support at home with a stretching, enriching and inclusive school experience. When children born under this government finish secondary school, it is our ambition that all children achieve higher standards and the disadvantage gap will be halved. This equates to 30,000 more disadvantaged young people passing their English and maths GCSEs than today.

We are driving standards through new regional improvement for standards and excellence teams, a refreshed high quality curriculum and assessment system and recruiting 6,500 additional teachers, as well as taking action to address barriers to learning.

Alongside this, schools continue to receive the pupil premium grant. In the 2026/27 financial year we will be providing £3.2 billion of pupil premium funding across all state-funded schools in England, an increase of 2.2% per pupil from the 2025/26 financial year. In the 2025/26 financial year Leicester received £23,112,193 of pupil premium funding, and the East Midlands received £260,716,608.