Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what criteria his Department used to decide the regions that are pilots for the new teaching school alliance hubs; and if he will make a statement.

The areas for the test and learn phase for teaching school hubs were chosen to test a variety of areas, for example, rural, coastal, urban or areas of high deprivation. This was done to test how the teaching school hub model will work in different contexts, prior to a decision being made about national roll out. There is one test and learn area in each regional schools commissioner region. In most cases, the area defined will cover whole local authority districts, aggregating to cover 200 to 300 schools.

The Department has published a prospectus which includes the names of the local authority districts in each region covered by the initiative. The prospectus can be found here:

https://www.contractsfinder.service.gov.uk/Notice/98dde964-ac94-410c-8254-1cd573c2dc45.

As the Department will be funding a maximum of only one hub in each region, it will be for the successful applicants to define the areas in which they operate. The Department will, however, expect hubs to serve all the state schools in their chosen areas.

The deadline for applications is Friday 26 July and it is not until after this date that it will be possible to determine the exact areas covered.