§ Mr. ColemanTo ask the Secretary of State for Education and Employment how many asylum-seeking children are being provided with education in each of the state primary and secondary schools in London; and what proportion of pupils in each school this represents. [108793]
§ Jacqui SmithLocal education authorities do not routinely keep information on the number of asylum seeker children in their area so it is not possible to provide details on the numbers of children who have been offered school places.
The Department does not instruct local education authorities to return information about asylum seeker children educated in schools. The figures are volatile which means that they are out-of-date soon after collection. This and the inevitably high costs for LEAs of carrying out frequent counts renders such an exercise as being of limited value.