Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to increase the number of apprentices undertaking apprenticeships at level 3 or above.
Answered by Anne Milton
We are implementing employer led apprenticeship reforms to continue to improve the quality of apprenticeships for all and to reach our commitment of 3 million apprenticeship starts in England by 2020.
Supported by the Institute for Apprenticeships, employers are designing new high quality apprenticeship standards to ensure apprenticeships are more responsive to their needs.
By 2020 there will be one new standard for each occupation identified by employers as requiring an apprenticeship, standards currently available range from levels 2 to 7: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/apprenticeship-standards.
The availability of apprenticeships at level 3 or above will be determined by employer groups choosing to develop new standards and employers choosing to offer apprenticeship opportunities.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the implications on individual testing entitlement for her policy of the recommendations of Professor Alison Wolf's report, Remaking Tertiary Education, published in November 2016.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
We welcome contributions to our thinking from experts on, and from within, the education sector. We are committed to delivering high performing further, technical and higher education, which represents good value for people throughout their lives.
For example, we have legislated to remove the barriers to the provision of two-year degrees. We are also introducing a new maintenance loan for part-time undergraduate study for academic year 2018/19 and intend to offer maintenance loans to support students on further education courses at Levels 4 and 5 in National Colleges and Institutes of Technology. This year’s Spring Budget committed £40million to fund pilots that will test ambitious, new approaches to removing barriers adults might face when considering re-entering education.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of lifelong learning on (a) economic growth and productivity, (b) unemployment and (c) the health and wellbeing of people involved in lifelong learning.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The Government recognises the importance of lifelong learning as a way for individuals to upskill and reskill throughout their lives, letting them access and stay in secure employment in response to labour market shifts such as increasing automation. Allowing workers to respond to these shifts contributes to the country’s economic resilience and productivity. Continuing to learn can also play a role in wellbeing later in life.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what plans she has to increase the number of individuals aged 24 and over in part-time and full-time education.
Answered by Lord Johnson of Marylebone
The Government is committed to ensuring all individuals have the opportunity to make the most of their potential. The Industrial Strategy Green Paper, published in January, outlined some of the challenges that adults face when considering re-entering education. This year’s Budget therefore committed £40million to fund pilots to test ambitious, new approaches to remove these barriers.
We want to increase participation in higher education by older and part-time students, and we have taken action to support those who choose to study part-time. These measures include:
In addition, we are extending undergraduate maintenance loans to distance learners from academic year 2019/20, subject to the development of a robust control regime.
We are also removing barriers to accelerated courses. Evidence shows that accelerated courses appeal particularly to mature students who want to retrain and enter the workplace more quickly than a traditional course would permit. We have already made provisions in the Higher Education and Research Act 2017 to remove a key barrier to the growth of these courses, and will now consult on implementation and setting a new fee cap specifically for accelerated courses in secondary legislation.
The Office for Fair Access has also asked universities to consider the different barriers mature learners may face in accessing, succeeding in, and progressing from higher education, and to consider what more they can do to attract and support part-time learners across the whole student lifecycle as part of their Access Agreements.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many apprenticeships on the new Trailblazer apprenticeship standards have been commenced in (a) Borough of Haringey, (b) London and (c) England in the last 12 months.
Answered by Anne Milton
A number of apprenticeship standards have been developed by trailblazer groups.
The number of starts on standards is published in the further education and skills statistical first release. This contains starts on standards since their introduction in September 2014, but geographical breakdowns have not been published to date.
The latest publication can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/further-education-and-skills-july-2017.
Previous and future editions can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/further-education-and-skills-statistical-first-release-sfr.
The data below is based on a breakdown of academic years between May 2015 to July 2016, and from August 2016 to April 2017 reported to date.
| Last 12 months reported |
Borough of Haringey | 60 |
London | 1,800 |
England | 12,150 |
Grand total | 12,500 |
Note: The England total is based on starts for learners with home postcodes in English regions, whereas the Grand Total will include some learners outside English regions but undertaking apprenticeships in England, and also learners where the home postcode is not known.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the effect of fathers on (a) the development of children in the early years and (b) life chances.
Answered by Robert Goodwill
Fathers play a fundamental role in their children’s development and future. The recently published study of early education and development (SEED) impact at age 3 report (available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/627108/SEED_Impact_at_age_3_Research_Brief.pdf) demonstrated the important role parents play, particularly through the impact of the home learning environment (HLE). These findings are underpinned by findings from the effective pre-school, primary and secondary education (EPPSE) study (available here: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/ioe/research/featured-research/effective-pre-school-primary-secondary-education-project/publications/#), which showed that the quality of the early HLE impacts on educational attainment through to GCSE and A-Level. The father’s level of educational qualifications specifically is also important for a range of cognitive, social emotional and other outcomes.
Early years providers are required, through the early years foundation stage framework (EYFS), to engage with parents and carers on their child’s development at home. Children’s centres, as set out in their core purpose, provide local services to parents to narrow inequalities in parenting aspirations and parenting skills. And in 2017, the department also put in place voluntary and charity sector grants worth almost £1.7m to improve the quality of the HLE for disadvantaged families and improve access to the disadvantaged two year-old offer.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, on how many occasions officials in her Department supported local authorities in assessing children's needs in families who are seeking Section 17 of the Children Act 1989 in 2016.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015), is clear that where a local authority undertakes an assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 such an assessment will be carried out by a social worker.
Department for Education (DfE) officials take up a range of secondment opportunities, including in some instances to local authority children’s services, as part of gaining experience of frontline services to aid the development of better policy. However, DfE has not seconded any staff to local authorities in order to support the assessment of children’s needs under section 17 and the Department does not anticipate that any DfE officials would be directly involved in supporting such assessments.
Department officials do support local authorities to deliver improvements to children’s social care services. Such support may be provided in order to respond to inadequate performance in local areas or to help develop and deliver innovative new approaches to delivering such services.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many staff her Department seconded to local authorities to support in the assessment of needs of children in families who are seeking section 17 of the Children Act 1989 in 2016.
Answered by Edward Timpson
Our statutory guidance, Working Together to Safeguard Children (2015), is clear that where a local authority undertakes an assessment under section 17 of the Children Act 1989 such an assessment will be carried out by a social worker.
Department for Education (DfE) officials take up a range of secondment opportunities, including in some instances to local authority children’s services, as part of gaining experience of frontline services to aid the development of better policy. However, DfE has not seconded any staff to local authorities in order to support the assessment of children’s needs under section 17 and the Department does not anticipate that any DfE officials would be directly involved in supporting such assessments.
Department officials do support local authorities to deliver improvements to children’s social care services. Such support may be provided in order to respond to inadequate performance in local areas or to help develop and deliver innovative new approaches to delivering such services.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the number of additional (a) school places and (b) teachers and teaching assistants that will be required in (i) Tottenham constituency, (ii) the Borough of Haringey and (iii) Greater London between 2017 and 2020.
Answered by Nick Gibb
Local authorities are responsible for ensuring there are sufficient school places for pupils. The Department collects pupil forecasts and school capacities from each local authority through the annual school capacity survey (SCAP). This data is used to allocate capital funding to local authorities to help them provide sufficient school places where they are needed. The Department’s Pupil Place Planning team then work with the Local Authorities to determine that those places are in fact being created.
The capacity and forecasts data are published on an annual basis, giving local authority and regional totals, through the SCAP tables which can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/school-capacity-academic-year-2014-to-2015. School capacity and forecast data is not collected at a constituency level.
The Department also publishes school place scorecards to show the challenges that local authorities are facing, together with the progress that they are making in providing sufficient good quality school places. The latest published scorecards, forecasting demand to 2017-18, can be found at https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/local-authority-school-places-scorecards-2015.
The school place scorecards show that between 2009/10 and 2014/15, in Haringey, 2,416 primary school places and 494 secondary places were created. 450 further primary school places are planned for delivery between 2015/16 and 2017/18. The Department has estimated that Haringey needs an additional 60 primary places to meet demand in 2017/18.
Over the same period, across all London local authorities, 135,000 primary places have been created, with 57,000 places planned for delivery, and an estimated 10,200 places needed to meet demand in 2017/18. In secondary, 67,000 places have been created, with 21,000 planned for delivery and an estimated 1,400 places needed to meet demand.
The requested information on the number of teachers and teaching assistants that will be required in the Tottenham constituency, the Borough of Haringey, and Greater London is not available.
The Department for Education uses the Teacher Supply Model (TSM) to estimate the national requirements for the number of postgraduate Initial Teacher Training places (and as part of this process, the number of qualified teachers) to meet demand. Decisions around the specific requirements for teachers and teaching assistants in individual schools are the responsibility of schools.
The 2016/17 version of the TSM, which was used to inform the 2016/17 ITT recruitment process, along with a user guide explaining the methodology in detail, is available at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/teacher-supply-model.
Asked by: David Lammy (Labour - Tottenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 20 February 2017 to Question 63761, on GCE A-level, where the information requested is held.
Answered by Nick Gibb
The information that the honourable member requires is not routinely available in Key Stage 5 data. I have asked the statistical head of profession to review the analysis for the information requested by the honourable member. The Department plans to publish this for the first time in a statistical bulletin on Key Stage 5 attainment by characteristics, on 16 March 2017.