Question to the Department for Work and Pensions:

To ask the Secretary of State for Work and Pensions, what recent assessment her Department has made of the level of child poverty in Wolverhampton North East constituency using the four measures of poverty under the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016.

This Government is committed to action that improves long-term outcomes for children and families by focusing on tackling the root causes of poverty and disadvantage. The four ‘Life Chances’ measures introduced through the Welfare Reform and Work Act 2016, which replaced the income based targets set out in the Child Poverty Act 2010, are designed to drive action and measure progress in the areas that we know can make the biggest difference - parental worklessness and children’s educational achievement.

The measures are based on official statistics produced by the Office for National Statistics on the proportion of children in workless households and the proportion of children in long-term workless households; and on Department for Education statistics on the educational attainment at Key Stage 4 of all pupils, and of disadvantaged pupils.

Although these statistics do not all provide data for individual constituencies, local authority-level data is available for the measure of all children in workless households and for both the educational attainment measures.

In 2016, 21.4 per cent of children were in workless households in Wolverhampton local authority. This compares to 27.2 per cent in 2010.

Source:

https://www.ons.gov.uk/employmentandlabourmarket/peoplenotinwork/unemployment/bulletins/worklesshouseholdsforregionsacrosstheuk/2016

In 2017, pupils sat reformed GCSEs in English language, English literature and maths for the first time, graded on a 9 to 1 scale. 35.6 per cent of all pupils and 22.8 per cent of disadvantaged pupils in the Wolverhampton local authority area achieved 9-5 in English and maths.

GCSE outcomes by constituency are available for all pupils but not broken down by disadvantaged pupils. In 2017, 28.3 per cent of all pupils in the Wolverhampton North East constituency achieved 9-5 in English and maths.

Source: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/revised-gcse-and-equivalent-results-in-england-2016-to-2017