Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to improve opportunities for young people in Gloucester.

The Opportunity Mission will build opportunity for all by giving every child, including children across Gloucester the best start in life, helping them achieve and thrive, and building skills for opportunity and growth. This will be underpinned by family security, and we must tackle the underlying barriers to opportunity that hold too many young people back.

That is why the department is committed to recruiting 6,500 additional teachers, creating 3,000 new or expanded school-based nurseries, expanding childcare entitlements for eligible working families, providing free breakfast clubs in every primary school and launching Skills England to transform opportunities and drive growth. We are also investing more in children’s services to set them on a sustainable trajectory and have announced new funding for kinship care and fostering to keep children safe and provide family security for our most vulnerable children.

We will also introduce the youth guarantee, which will help 18 to 21-year-olds to access education, training, or apprenticeships opportunities and receive employment support. This will give all young people the best start in their career, so they can secure good, skilled jobs in the future, both in Gloucester and across the country.

The government will also introduce new foundation apprenticeships for young people in targeted and growing sectors. Foundation apprenticeships are a work-based training offer that will give more young people a foot in the door and will support clear progression pathways into further work-based training and employment. We will work closely with the sector to ensure the design is fit for purpose and meets employers’ needs and further detail will be set out in due course.