Question to the Department for Education:

To ask His Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support local authorities to provide sufficient school places and support services for migrant children entering the education system.

All children of compulsory school age in England, including migrant children, must receive a suitable full-time education. Any parent, including parents of migrant children, can, at any time, apply for a place for their child at any school through the relevant admission authority. Where a parent is struggling to secure a school place in-year, they can contact their local authority for support.

Paragraph 3.14 of the Schools Admissions Code requires every local authority to have a Fair Access Protocol in place. This ensures that vulnerable children, including refugees and asylum seekers, and those who are having difficulty securing a school place in-year, are allocated a school place as quickly as possible, minimising the time the child is out of school.

Guidance on school applications for foreign national children is available to schools, local authorities and parents. This guidance can be accessed here: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/schools-admissions-applications-from-overseas-children.

As set out in the Kings Speech, in the Children’s Wellbeing Bill, the department is planning to legislate on requiring all schools to cooperate with the local authority on school admissions and place planning matters, and to ensure admissions decisions account for the needs of communities.

Local authorities also have legal duties to ensure sufficient school places. The department provides capital funding through the Basic Need grant to support local authorities in providing additional school places. We carefully target funding at areas with need, based upon data supplied by local authorities themselves, reflecting their local knowledge of all the drivers of pupil numbers in their areas, such as birth rates, housing developments and inward andoutward migration both from within the UK and overseas.

Nearly £1.5 billion of Basic Need capital allocations have been confirmed to support local authorities to create school places needed over the current and following two academic years, up to and including the academic year starting in September 2026. Local authorities’ allocations are in the attachment and published here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/basic-need-allocations.

The department’s Pupil Place Planning Advisor team also engages with councils on a regular basis to review their plans for creating additional places and to consider alternatives where necessary. When local authorities are experiencing difficulties, we support them to find solutions as quickly as possible. Where local authorities are failing in their duty, the government will intervene.