§ Lord Smith of Leighasked Her Majesty's Government:
Whether the proposal from the Department for Education and Skills to use income support data to represent deprivation to determine need for education support grant takes account of the acknowledged regional variation and its impact on the reliability of the data. [HL5974]
§ Baroness Ashton of UphollandAn income-based measure provides a good proxy for childhood deprivation. At the local education authority level the best such proxy available is provided by receipt of income support. The measure is based on a 100 per cent count of claimants at a point in time and our investigations have shown that it is robust and that claimants can be accurately assigned to local education authorities.