Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking with the Department of Health and Social Care, to improve the education of children and young people in hospital.

On 16 March the Department published ‘Creating Opportunity for All: Our Vision for Alternative Provision’. This set out the Department’s vision to ensure that all children in alternative provision (AP), including those placed in AP for reasons related to their health, receive a high quality education.

The Department is working collaboratively with local authorities, schools and the wider AP sector, including hospital schools, to build a strong evidence base of effective practice to raise standards. The Department is developing and sharing effective practice within AP, including ensuring AP settings can access school improvement resources and launching a dedicated AP Innovation Fund. The Department is also strengthening partnership arrangements for commissioning and delivering AP, including clarifying the role of schools, alternative providers and local authorities in delivering high quality AP.