Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of whether collaboration between maintained and independent schools will increase as a result of the Education and Skills Funding Agency funding, announced on 6 June

The new partnerships grant funding announced on 7 June at the Schools Together Group annual conference, aims to raise the ambition for what schools can achieve together, and to remove a key financial barrier to new partnerships forming. It is designed to attract bids from both new partnerships who may benefit from seed funding, as well as existing partnerships looking to deepen and expand their collaborations. We will publish further details and invite schools to submit bids in the autumn.

As part of this programme, the department also plans to conduct evaluation on the success of this grant in increasing the quality and impact of partnerships. This will be published in due course.