Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 16 March to Question 134845 on English Language: Refugees, how much funding the Government has allocated to accredited English language teaching for refugees in each of the last 10 years.

The Department for Education funds English for Speakers of Other Languages (ESOL) courses through the adult education budget. We do not collect data on learners that would allow us to identify them as refugees. We have previously published providers’ overall spending on ESOL, which includes funding for refugee learners. I refer the hon. Member for Birmingham, Hall Green to the answer my right hon. Friend, the Minister for Apprentices and Skills gave on 12 March 2018 to 131906.

In addition, as part of the Home Office’s Vulnerable Person Resettlement Scheme (VPRS) and Vulnerable Children Resettlement Programme (VCRP), local authorities receive £8520 per person for the first year of resettlement (with the exception of Northern Ireland, where the tariff is £8000 per person) from which they are required to provide a range of support services, including access to English language support. Local authorities are able to determine for themselves how this tariff funding is used, based on local need and service provision.

The government has also made an additional £10 million available over five years for English language support for those resettled on the VPRS and VCRP programmes. This funding is for the provision of ESOL classes, and equates to £850 per adult resettled. The Home Office has also allocated funding (£600,000 in each of the financial years 2016/17, 2017/18 and 2018/19, and £500,000 in 2019/20) to enable local authorities to provide additional childcare to those on the VPRS and VCRS so that they can attend ESOL classes.