Asked by: Nickie Aiken (Conservative - Cities of London and Westminster)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much funding his Department has allocated to the national schools linking programme in each year since the establishment of that programme; what plans he has for the maintenance of that funding in each of the next five years; and whether he has made an assessment of the effectiveness of that programme.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Together with the Ministry for Housing, Communities and Local Government (MHCLG), we have provided £1,339,240 to the Linking Network, since September 2016, to support their national school linking programme. The Department’s contribution to the programme over each year is as follows:
2016-17: £0
2017-18: £153,188
2018-19: £197,401
2019-20: £247,000
This has supported the Linking Network to expand their work into more areas and reach more pupils – with sustained linking programmes now taking place in 28 local areas; and in the last year, over 540 schools taking part leading to over 22,500 pupils participating in activities supporting integration.