Question to the Department for Education:

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether his Department records the number of young people who (a) visit Auschwitz on educational visits and (b) take part in other educational visits to remember the Holocaust and its victims.

The Department funds the Holocaust Educational Trust’s ‘Lessons from Auschwitz’ which provides for two students, aged 16-18, and a teacher from every state funded school/sixth form college in England to visit Auschwitz-Bikenau. £2,126,437 is being provided in 2019-20 and £2,193,675 in 2020-21. We expect a minimum of 1,968 students to undertake visits through this programme in 2019-20.

Additionally, £1.7 million for the 2019-20 financial year is being provided for the Bergen-Belsen Commemoration Programme. The programme provides for pupils and teachers from state funded secondary schools in England to visit Bergen-Belsen to commemorate the 75^th anniversary of the liberation of the concentration camp. We expect a minimum of 1,290 pupils to undertake visits through this programme in 2019-20.