Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to his Department’s press release, Multi-million fund to boost children's early language skills, published on 30 April 2018, what estimate he has made of the number of children who will benefit from the £5 million funding to improve children’s language skills.

As the government announced on 30 April, the Education Endowment Foundation will trial projects to provide practical tools and advice to parents so that they can help their child to learn new words.

The Education Endowment Foundation will launch a call for proposals for home learning environment programmes to trial shortly. Trial areas will be finalised when the trial programmes have been selected.

The department has not estimated the number of children that will benefit from the trial, however, our objective is to strengthen the evidence base and disseminate the findings widely in order that parents and children across the country can benefit.