Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of regional variations in educational attainment across England.

The ‘Every Child Achieving and Thriving’ White Paper sets out our plan to tackle the unacceptable disparities in attainment across the country.

This builds on the steps set out in our ‘Giving Every Child the Best Start in Life’ strategy, to expand family services and make early education and childcare more accessible and affordable, delivering change for children across the country.

We are driving standards through a refreshed curriculum, recruiting 6,500 additional teachers and improving school attendance through the launch of our regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) attendance and behaviour hubs who have the capacity to support over 3000 schools. The RISE teams are also providing mandatory targeted intervention tailored for schools identified by Ofsted as needing to improve.

Alongside this, we are launching two place-focused missions, Mission North East and Mission Coastal starting in Hastings and Scarborough, to transform outcomes locally, particularly for disadvantaged pupils, and provide a blueprint for national changes.