Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 14 October 2019 to Question 284 on Private Education: West Midlands, how many people employed by the unit on promoting cross-sector partnerships attended (a) an independent secondary school and (b) a state secondary school.

The System Partnerships Unit (SPU) works across several policy and regional delivery teams within the Department. There are two central SPU staff members, within Departmental policy teams, at Grade 7 and SEO, although they also have other non-SPU related duties. In order to protect individuals’ personal information, the Department can not disclose information on educational background.

In addition to the central staff, there are delivery leads in each of the eight Regional School Commissioner (RSC) regions who have a wide range of school improvement duties, of which supporting partnerships is one part. As such, they are employed by the RSCs rather than as part of a central unit.