Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to funding (1) infrastructure, (2) guidance, and (3) training for education providers and potential partners, to support enrichment activity in schools.

The department is committed to ensuring young people have access to high-quality extra-curricular opportunities. The department understands these are an important part of a rich educational experience and can bring wider benefits to young people's mental health, confidence, social skills and general wellbeing.

The department supports a range of initiatives to expand access to high-quality extra-curricular activities. For example, the department is investing over £200 million a year in our Holiday Activities and Food programme and working with the Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) to offer the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award to all state secondary schools in England. This is in addition to working with DCMS to help schools ensure their pupils are getting the most out of the National Youth Guarantee, which is designed to ensure young people are given access to more activities, trips away from home and volunteering opportunities.

The department’s wider approach to enrichment is informed by the view that schools are best placed to understand and meet the needs of their pupils and should have flexibility to decide what range of extra-curricular activities to offer. Both pupil premium and recovery premium can be used to fund enrichment activities and in March 2022 the department updated the guidance to make this clearer to schools.

The department has also started to work alongside DCMS on the Enrichment Partnerships Pilot (EPP), which aims to improve the enrichment offer of up to 200 secondary schools in Education Investment Areas. The EPP has been awarded £3.381 million from HM Treasury’s Shared Outcomes Fund and will test whether greater coordination locally can enhance school enrichment offers and remove barriers to participation, create efficiencies (reducing the burden on school staff resources) and unlock existing funding and provision. The Centre of Learning run by our joint delivery partners, the National Citizen Service Trust and the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award, will also develop best practice guidance and resources. This will support relevant, high-quality enrichment coordination for the pilot, which is subsequently intended to support schools and improve access to and participation in enrichment in the future.