Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what proportion of Official Development Assistance allocated to his Department is spent on independent schools; and what other programmes are funded by that Assistance.
The department’s estimated Official Development Assistance (ODA) spend in 2018 was £20 million, which also included a £5 million contribution to the Association of Commonwealth Universities’ scholarship endowment fund. This spend was announced last April and exclusively funds master’s level scholarships for citizens of ODA-eligible Commonwealth countries.
This estimate of spending on ODA primarily relates to the provision of education of child and unaccompanied child asylum seekers in the 12 months after they make an asylum claim in the UK. The department estimates how much of the wider core schools funding for England is allocated due to having these children on schools’ rolls. The estimate does not include any spending on independent schools.