Julie Cooper – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Department for Education

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Julie Cooper on 2016-04-08.

To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if the Government will make it its policy to allocate revenue raised from the soft drinks industry levy to maintain the grant for summer schools.

Mr Sam Gyimah

The Government has no plans to use the soft drink levy to maintain the grant for pupil premium summer schools. The 2016 budget statement identified that the soft drinks industry levy would be used to double the amount of funding to £320m per annum that we dedicate to sport in every primary school and to make it easier for up to a quarter of secondary schools to extend their school day to include a wider range of activities, including extra sport.

The Government has protected the pupil premium at current per pupil rates for the rest of the Parliament, providing schools with around £2.5 billion per year of additional funding to support their disadvantaged pupils. Schools have the choice to continue running summer schools and can use their pupil premium allocation to fund places for their disadvantaged pupils.