Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what estimate he has made of the number of secondary school pupils who attended a face-to-face summer school in summer 2021.

The 2021 summer schools programme was part of the education recovery response to help pupils catch-up on lost education. School participation and pupil attendance were optional.

Over the summer, almost 2,800 secondary schools across England signed up to host a summer school, to help pupils catch up on lost education caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, as well as helping to improve mental health and wellbeing.

The window for claims from schools for running summer schools closed on 1 November 2021. The department is currently processing claims and analysing the figures, including numbers of attendees.

The department intends to evaluate the summer schools programme in due course, the findings of which will inform our decisions on future summer schools.