Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps she is taking to support children living in temporary accommodation to ensure their access to a stable education in (a) Thurrock and (b) England.

The Opportunity Mission will break the link between young people’s backgrounds and their future success across Thurrock and the whole of England, by ensuring family security and providing the best start in life. It will ensure all children are achieving, thriving and building skills for opportunity and growth.

High and rising standards in every school are at the heart of this mission, driving better outcomes for every child, and delivered through excellent teaching and leadership, a high-quality curriculum, and a system which removes the barriers to learning which hold too many children back.

We know that disadvantaged young people in particular face barriers to engagement with education, including insecure housing. If children are unable to engage with education, then no matter how good teaching and learning is, they are much less likely to succeed.

From April 2025 the department will be rolling out Family Help Services that will prioritise supporting the whole family and intervening at the earliest opportunity to prevent challenges escalating. Lead practitioners will undertake assessments of all needs of the family, including those who are experiencing, or at risk of experiencing, homelessness and work to support families where this may be part of a more complex set of needs.

As announced at the Autumn Budget 2024, funding for homelessness services is increasing next year by £233 million compared to this year (2024/25). This increased spending will help to prevent rises in the number of families in temporary accommodation and help to prevent rough sleeping. This brings total spend to nearly £1 billion in 2025/26.

The Child Poverty Taskforce has also started urgent work to publish the Child Poverty Strategy. The Strategy will tackle overall child poverty including a focus on children in deepest poverty lacking essentials. This is set out in more detail in the 23 October publication ‘Tackling Child Poverty: Developing our Strategy’, which can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/tackling-child-poverty-developing-our-strategy.

Homeless children are included in the Fair Access Protocol, which is a mandatory mechanism developed by local authorities in partnership with all schools in their area. Its aim is to ensure that vulnerable children, and those who are having difficulty in securing a school place in-year, are allocated a school place as quickly as possible.