Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to providing additional resources to fund places for looked after children to boarding schools; and what assessment they have made, of any, of any benefits such children could gain from that process.

The department launched the Broadening Educational Pathways programme in 2020 to increase the role of the independent and state-funded boarding sector in the education of looked-after children. The Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation was appointed as a delivery partner, providing a placement brokerage service to ensure children are placed in schools best suited to support their educational attainment and personal wellbeing. In the ‘Stable Homes, Built on Love’ implementation strategy, the department committed to further expansion of the programme and has subsequently extended the contract until September 2024 to further open up educational opportunities in boarding schools to even more children in and on the edge of care.

The department will continue, over the course of the contract, to work in partnership with the Royal National Children’s Springboard Foundation to understand the benefits to the children and young people placed by the programme, including the findings of formal research they have commissioned, from the University of Nottingham, on the outcomes for looked-after and vulnerable children attending boarding schools.