Alternative Education: Finance

(asked on 11th March 2019) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department has diverted any funds that had been allocated to the improvement and expansion of alternative provision to other policy areas in the past 12 months.


Answered by
Nick Gibb Portrait
Nick Gibb
This question was answered on 19th March 2019

The Government is committed to reforming alternative provision and published the plan ‘Creating opportunity for all: Our vision for alternative provision’ in March 2018. In August the projects funded by the Department’s £4 million alternative provision (AP) Innovation Fund began. The Department also commissioned external research into the AP market and AP practice which was published in October 2018. On 11 March 2019, the Department launched competitions for 2 new AP free schools, having assessed bids from local authorities who had worked in partnership with local schools in their area. The document ‘Creating opportunity for all’ can be found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/713665/Creating_opportunity_for_all_-_AP_roadmap.pdf.

As alternative provision is predominately funded through the high needs funding block of local authorities’ dedicated schools grant, the sector will benefit from my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State’s December announcement that an extra £250 million would be allocated for high needs funding. This was on top of the increases already promised, across the current and next financial year, bringing the total to £6.1 billion in 2018/19, and £6.3 billion in 2019/20.

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