Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the answer by Lord Nash on 11 January about the risk to children in unrecognised school settings or receiving home education, what specific measures are taken to help children who come from households where English is not spoken.

The Government supports children from homes where English is not spoken in a number of ways. At present, it is up to local authorities to decide whether to include English as an Additional Language (EAL) as a factor in the local formulae for funding schools. 136 used an EAL factor in the current year, with per pupil values ranging from below £100 to over £3000. However, in our proposals for the National Funding Formula, currently under consultation, we have proposed that all children with EAL will attract an additional £515 (primary) or £1385 (secondary) to their school, for the first 3 years after they enter the state system, wherever they are in the country. This is proposed to come in from 2018-19.

Where children are educating at home instead of in school, parents who educate a child at home must provide a full-time education suitable to the child’s age, ability and aptitudes, and it is likely that such an education would need to include lessons in English to meet that requirement.

The Government also supports training for adults in English for Speakers of Other Language (ESOL): to enable unemployed people on benefits to get the skills they need to get into and stay in work; to support the integration of long-standing migrant communities and particularly those individuals most at risk of isolation from services and wider society; and to support refugees, especially Syrians, to resettle in the UK. DfE funds ESOL training through the Adult Education Budget, which is allocated to providers annually by the Skills Funding Agency. In 2015-16 just under £100m was devoted to ESOL provision.