Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the achievement gap in qualifications between male and female pupils in schools.

This government is committed to raising school standards across the country to make sure that all young people leave school with the knowledge, qualifications and skills that they need to succeed in life.

The proportion of children in good or outstanding schools has risen from 66% in 2010 to 86%, meaning that 1.9 million more children are now in good or outstanding schools. Reforms to the curriculum, primary assessment and school accountability arrangements have been designed to ensure that schools are delivering the very best education to all children and young people. In particular, our GCSE reforms mean that we have a rigorous suite of qualifications for all pupils, in line with the standards expected in countries with high-performing education systems.

We know that teacher quality is vital in improving outcomes for all children and young people. That is why we are relentlessly focussed on reforms that will make the biggest difference to the recruitment and retention of excellent teachers. Since 2019, we have built on our Recruitment and Retention strategy, reforming Initial Teacher Training (ITT) content and developing the Early Career Framework (ECF).These reforms set out, for the first time, an evidence-based body of knowledge and skills that all teachers need in order to be effective in the classroom.

We know that the COVID-19 outbreak has affected every child and young person. That is why we have announced a £1 billion catch-up package to provide additional funding to support children and young people whose education has been disrupted by COVID-19. The package includes a National Tutoring Programme, which will provide up to £350 million of targeted support for disadvantaged and vulnerable pupils, as well as a £650 million universal catch-up premium, to support schools to target support for specific groups of pupils. This is in addition to our continued protection of pupil premium, worth more than £2.4 billion a year, which ensures that school leaders are equipped with the resources that they need in order to support pupils facing educational disadvantage.