Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will take steps to ensure that students in (a) Lincolnshire and (b) other rural areas have an adequate transport service to reach their place of work under the T-level requirement to do 315 hours of work experience.

Decisions about transport, including in Lincolnshire, are a matter for local transport authorities, working with transport operators.

However, students should not be prevented from undertaking a T Level industry placement due to the additional transport costs. Therefore we are taking a number of steps to ensure that students are able to access placements regardless of where they live. We have increased the travel bursaries that young people can draw on to help with travel costs and providers can use the T Level Capacity and Delivery Fund to help with travel costs. Additionally, the National Apprenticeships Service has been looking to encourage more employers including small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to offer placements as SMEs make up the majority of employers in rural areas.

We are also looking at imaginative and innovative approaches to student transport which already exist and enable greater access to placements, in particular for students in rural areas, and how we can foster these approaches more widely for T Levels.