Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department is taking steps to provide additional funding to schools for supply teachers to cover staff absences due to covid-19 in the autumn term of 2022.

The department continues to monitor the situation and is participating in cross-government contingency planning on the basis of Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (SAGE) scenarios.

The department provided additional financial support to schools facing the most extreme challenges through the COVID-19 school workforce fund in the 2021 autumn term and again in the 2022 spring term. The department regularly assesses and monitors the workforce pressures on schools and our mitigations to support them and will continue to review workforce absence in the 2022 autumn term.

The department has frontloaded funding increases to rapidly get money to schools, so that in the 2022/23 financial year, the total core schools budget is increasing by £4 billion compared to the 2021/22 financial year. This is a 7% cash terms per pupil boost and will help schools meet the cost pressures they are facing.