Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will fully fund summer holiday club places for children on free school meals.

On 22 June, we announced 17 local authority areas that will benefit from our Holiday Activities and Food programme this summer, providing thousands of disadvantaged children with access to healthy meals and enriching activities. Grant funding was allocated based on a competitive bidding process.

Provision for free school meals is ordinarily term-time only. However, owing to the COVID-19 outbreak, the government understands that children and parents face an unprecedented situation over the summer. To reflect this, we will be providing additional funding for a COVID Summer Food Fund. This will support families with children who are eligible for free school meals to receive food vouchers covering the six-week holiday period.

We have also recently announced a £1 billion COVID ‘catch-up’ package to directly tackle the impact of lost teaching time. £650 million will be shared across state primary, secondary and special schools over the 2020-2021 academic year. Schools are best placed to decide how this money is spent, but that can include, where appropriate, funding places at summer schools.

We recognise that all young people have lost time in education because of the COVID-19 outbreak, regardless of their income or background. Following the announcement from my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, confirming that holiday clubs will now be allowed to reopen during the summer holidays, we have published 2 pieces of guidance about community activities, holiday and after-school clubs, and other out-of-school provision for children over the age of 5. The guidance is available here:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/protective-measures-for-holiday-or-after-school-clubs-and-other-out-of-school-settings-for-children-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak and https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/guidance-for-parents-and-carers-of-children-attending-out-of-school-settings-during-the-coronavirus-covid-19-outbreak.