Education: Coventry

(asked on 23rd February 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps his Department is taking to tackle educational disadvantage in (a) Coventry North East constituency and (b) Coventry.


Answered by
Vicky Ford Portrait
Vicky Ford
This question was answered on 1st March 2021

Disadvantaged pupils have always been at the heart of our education policy. Since 2011 we have been providing extra funding - £2.4 billion this year alone - through the pupil premium for school leaders to boost the progress and attainment of their disadvantaged pupils. This year, schools in Coventry North East are sharing additional funding of £6.7 million from the pupil premium; the figure for Coventry city is £18.1 million.

To ensure schools have the tools to make effective use of the funding we established the £137 million Education Endowment Foundation. It carries out extensive research to produce guidance reports for schools setting out how they can use the additional funding to best improve their disadvantaged pupils’ outcomes. This guidance is available here: https://educationendowmentfoundation.org.uk/evidence-summaries/pupil-premium-guide/.

Alongside this, our £1 billion catch-up package for the current academic year includes a £350 million National Tutoring Programme for disadvantaged pupils. This is increasing access to high-quality tuition for the most disadvantaged young people, helping to accelerate their academic progress and tackling the attainment gap between them and their peers.

Since the start of the COVID-19 outbreak we have distributed over one million laptops to disadvantaged pupils so they can continue their studies remotely. On 24 February 2021, the government announced a £700 million Education Recovery package, focusing on an expansion of one-to-one and small group tutoring programmes, as well as supporting the development of disadvantaged children in early years settings, and summer provision for those pupils who need it the most. This includes a one-off Recovery Premium for the next academic year that will be allocated to schools based on the same methodology as the pupil premium. In this way, schools with more disadvantaged pupils will receive larger allocations.

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