Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average length of time was for children fleeing domestic abuse to be allocated a school place in the latest period for which data is available.

Children living in a refuge are, among a number of other categories of vulnerable and hard-to-place children, eligible for consideration under the fair access protocol. Where a child is referred to the protocol, they must be allocated a school place within 20 school days.

Where a child has difficulty in securing a school place via the usual in-year admissions processes, fair access protocols exist to ensure that school places can be secured as quickly as possible for vulnerable and hard-to-place children.

Each local authority is required to have a fair access protocol in place and all admission authorities are required to participate in it.