Question to the Department for Digital, Culture, Media & Sport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Digital, Culture, Media and Sport, what estimate her Department has made of the number of schools in England that will take part in her gigabit broadband initiative for schools.

To support the delivery of gigabit-capable connectivity for public buildings, including schools, as part of Project Gigabit we are investing up to £110 million into our GigaHubs programme.

As part of this, DCMS has recently announced a joint £82 million investment with the Department for Education (DfE) to connect up to 3,000 eligible schools across England to gigabit-capable broadband. DCMS will connect up to 2,000 of these schools and the DfE will fund up to an additional 1,000 schools as part of their mission to enable every school in England to access high-speed internet by 2025.

Up to 35 primary schools in Dorset and Oxfordshire are also in line for delivery of a gigabit-capable connection through existing GigaHubs projects.