Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department has allocated to the national schools linking programme in each year since the establishment of that programme; what plans he has for the maintenance of that funding in each of the next five years; and whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of that programme.

Together with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), we have provided £1,339,240 to the Linking Network, since September 2016, to support their national school linking programme. The Department’s contribution to the programme over each year is as follows:

2016-17: £0

2017-18: £153,188

2018-19: £197,401

2019-20: £247,000

This has supported the Linking Network to expand their work into more areas and reach more pupils – with sustained linking programmes now taking place in 28 local areas; and in the last year, over 540 schools taking part leading to over 22,500 pupils participating in activities supporting integration.