Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, for what reason local authorities with higher attainment outcomes designated as Opportunity Areas were chosen as Education Investment Areas ahead of local authorities with lower attainment outcomes.

The methodology used to select Education Investment Areas (EIA) and Opportunity Areas (OA) is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/social-mobility-and-opportunity-areas.

EIAs were principally selected based on poor attainment across key stage 2 (KS2) and key stage 4 (KS4). To ensure the department’s approach to levelling up is consistent with existing policies to improve outcomes in specific places, EIAs also included any local authority which contains an existing OA or an area previously identified for additional school improvement support.

Areas selected as EIAs are the local authorities that are either: (i) in the bottom 50 ranked local authorities on KS2 and KS4 attainment; or (ii) contain an OA or areas previously identified for additional school improvement support.