Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to (a) improve university access for students from underrepresented backgrounds and (b) tackle financial barriers faced by such students.
Answered by Janet Daby - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The government will support the aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to go to university, regardless of their background.
Too many people across our country do not get the opportunity to succeed. The government will act to change this.
The government recognises that UK higher education creates opportunity, is a world-leading sector in our economy and supports local communities. The government is committed to a sustainable funding model, which supports high value provision thereby powering opportunity and growth and meeting the skills needs of the country.
Asked by: Sonia Kumar (Labour - Dudley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to tackle disparities in educational attainment between the most and least affluent area; and whether she plans to review the funding formula to help ensure more effective distribution of resources to schools serving disadvantaged communities in (a) Dudley and (b) elsewhere.
Answered by Catherine McKinnell - Minister of State (Education)
The department wants to break down barriers to opportunity for every child, no matter what their background, and have an education system in which all children and young people can achieve and thrive.
All children deserve to have the best start in life, and the department will achieve this by ensuing access to high-quality early education and childcare. By upgrading space in primary schools, the department will create an additional 3,000 nurseries which will transform life chances.
The department has moved quickly to start driving up school standards by beginning work to recruit an additional 6,500 expert teachers, and have already launched an independent, expert-led curriculum and assessment review to deliver our ambition for every child and young person to study a curriculum which is rich and broad, inclusive and innovative.
The Children’s Wellbeing Bill will ensure our education and children’s social care systems transform life chances for millions of children and young people, by ensuring the school system is fair for every child. Every primary school, including those in Dudley, will be required to provide free breakfast clubs, to ensure that every child, no matter their background, is well prepared for the school day. We will limit the number of branded uniform items that a school can require to cut costs for parents and families.
The schools national funding formula (NFF) distributes funding based on school and pupil characteristics. The NFF targets funding to schools which have the greatest numbers of pupils with additional needs. In 2024/25, 10.2% of the formula is targeted towards deprived pupils. The department is considering the impact of the formula on local authorities, including Dudley. It is important that there is a fair education funding system that directs funding to where it is needed.
More widely, for too many children, living in poverty robs them of opportunity and affects their ability to learn. Child poverty has gone up by 700,000 since 2010, with over four million children now growing up in a low-income family.
My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, therefore announced the appointment of the Secretary of State for Work and Pension and the Secretary of State for Education to be the joint leads of a new ministerial taskforce, to begin work on a Child Poverty Strategy. The government is committed to delivering an ambitious strategy to reduce child poverty, tackle the root causes, and give every child the best start at life.