Question to the Department for Education:

To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the reciprocal benefits that independent schools and schools maintained by their local authority have derived from working together during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The department continues to encourage and support new partnerships between independent and state-funded schools, in line with the department’s joint understanding with the Independent Schools Council. The department wants to see more schools forming impactful and mutually beneficial collaborations across the areas of curriculum development, teaching quality, governance and leadership, and other targeted forms of school improvement. As we move forward from the disruption caused by the COVID-19 outbreak, we hope that more schools will see the opportunity to work together to find solutions to common problems and to build a more collaborative system.