Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to close the deprivation attainment gap in (a) Coventry and (b) the West Midlands.

Educational achievement, irrespective of background, is at the heart of our commitment to make this a country where everyone has a fair chance to go as far as their hard work will take them.

We recognise that children from poor backgrounds may face additional challenges to realising their potential. We have spent over £13 billion since 2011, almost £2.5 billion this year alone, through the pupil premium to provide schools with resources to overcome barriers to learning and introduced the early years pupil premium for disadvantaged three- and four-year olds. Since 2011, the attainment gap in England has narrowed by 10% at age 11 and 16. Over 15,000 pupils in Coventry are eligible for support and last year their schools received more than £18 million through the pupil premium. In the West Midlands over 258,000 attracted the pupil premium, bringing an additional £302 million to their schools.

We look to schools to use this extra funding effectively. We know from research that a personalised approach, drawing on well-evidenced strategies, generally produces good results. Studies by the National Foundation for Educational Research and the toolkit maintained by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) provide support to school leaders in their decision-making. Examples of effective practice have been highlighted through our national Pupil Premium Awards. The EEF, which was set up in 2011 through a £125 million government grant, also runs a national network of Research Schools that help other schools adopt effective, evidence-based approaches to improving disadvantaged pupils’ attainment. Shireland Collegiate Academy in Sandwell is the designated EEF Research School for the Midlands.

We know that gaps can open by age five, much earlier than 11 or 16, and that the early years has a key role to play in improving social mobility later in life. That is why in' Unlocking Talent, Fulfilling Potential', we set our ambition to close the word gap at age five, backed by over £100 million of investment. The evidence clearly points to the impact of early education on later outcomes, and that disadvantaged children stand to gain the most. That’s why we’ve invested over £2 billion since 2013 in the entitlement to 15 hours of free early education for disadvantaged two-year-olds, from which over half a million have benefitted. Nearly 5,000 of these children took up their place in Coventry, worth £3.4 million.

The gap in Coventry between the proportion of disadvantaged children achieving a good level of development at age five on the early years foundation stage profile and their wealthier peers continues to narrow, from 17 percentage points in 2013 to 10 percentage points in 2017.