Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what were the costs of teaching English to pupils who do not have English as their first language, broken down by region, in each of the last three years.

Under current funding arrangements for schools in England, local authorities devise funding formulae through which to distribute funding to schools in their localities. One of the factors local authorities can include is ‘English as an additional language’ (EAL). In 2014-15, a total of £244 million was allocated through this factor to school budgets. In 2015-16, it was £267 million, and in 2016-17, £282 million. The table below provides these figures by region. These figures do not represent the cost of supporting pupils with EAL. The amounts form part of the school’s core budget and it is then for school leaders to determine how best to use their whole budget so that all pupils can reach their full potential.

We will introduce a national funding formula from 2018-19 so that funding is fair and matched to need. Our first consultation, launched earlier this year, proposed that the formula should include an EAL factor. We will set out the precise detail of the formula in our second consultation, to be published later this autumn.

Table 1: The amount of the schools Dedicated Schools Grant local authorities allocate to the EAL factor in the last three years, by region