Asked by: Sally-Ann Hart (Conservative - Hastings and Rye)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what guidance her Department provides on the powers (a) she and (b) local education authorities have to remove a school from an academy trust without the agreement of the trust.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The circumstances in which the department can remove a school from an academy trust without the agreement of the trust are set out in published guidance, which is titled ‘Schools causing concern’. In summary, the department can remove a school in circumstances where my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education’s, powers are triggered to terminate its funding agreement. Academies are accountable to the Secretary of State and therefore local authorities have no powers to remove an academy from a trust.
Asked by: John McDonnell (Labour - Hayes and Harlington)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent estimate she has made of the total cost to the public purse for removing (a) RAAC and (b) asbestos from schools in England in the (i) 2022-23, (ii) 2023-24 and (iii) 2024-25 financial years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Well maintained, safe school buildings are a priority for the department to support a high-quality education for all children. Responsibility for keeping buildings safe and well maintained lies with schools and their responsible bodies, such as local authorities, academy trusts and voluntary-aided (VA) bodies. The department supports responsible bodies by providing capital funding, delivering major rebuilding programmes and offering guidance and support.
The government is funding the permanent removal of RAAC present in schools and colleges either through capital grants, or through the School Rebuilding Programme. The 2021 Spending Review announced a total of £19 billion of capital funding to support the education sector between the 2022/23 and 2024/25 financial years. Funding for RAAC during this spending period will be managed from unallocated departmental capital budgets and will not involve cutting existing commitments.
The scope and cost of each RAAC project will vary depending on the extent of the issue and nature and design of the buildings. The department is working with settings to conduct the necessary technical assessments as quickly as possible to scope and progress the works needed. The total costs will not be known until all building works have been carried out.
With regard to asbestos, the department expects all local authorities, governing bodies, and academy trusts to have robust plans in place to manage any asbestos in school buildings effectively, in line with their legal duties. The department follows advice from the Health and Safety Executive (HSE) that as long as asbestos is in good condition, well protected and unlikely to be damaged or disturbed, it is usually safer to manage in place.
In many cases, asbestos will be removed as part of wider rebuilding or refurbishment work and annual condition funding can be used to remove asbestos where required. The department has allocated over £17 billion since 2015 for keeping schools safe and operational, including £1.8 billion in each year of the 2021 Spending Review period. Decisions on spending are primarily taken locally by responsible bodies, so the department does not hold data on the total cost of spend on asbestos removal. Where asbestos needs to be removed as part of work to mitigate RAAC, based on professional advice, the department will work closely with responsible bodies to help them do so.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many meetings Ministers in her Department have had with officials at Central Bedfordshire Council on the transition from a three to two tier school system in Central Bedfordshire.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Officials from the East of England Regions Group have a weekly schedule of meetings with Central Bedfordshire officials, where a member of its Schools for the Future Programme responsible for the transition from a three to two tier school system is available to provide updates on the programme. In addition, on 23 February 2024, the department held a specific meeting where Central Bedfordshire officials provided an update on the progress of its three to two tier transition.
No Ministerial meetings were held in 2023 or 2024 with Central Bedfordshire Council to discuss its plans to move from a three to two-tier educational system.
Asked by: Alistair Strathern (Labour - Mid Bedfordshire)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many meetings officials in her Department have had with Central Bedfordshire Council officers on the transition from a three to two tier school system in Central Bedfordshire.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Officials from the East of England Regions Group have a weekly schedule of meetings with Central Bedfordshire officials, where a member of its Schools for the Future Programme responsible for the transition from a three to two tier school system is available to provide updates on the programme. In addition, on 23 February 2024, the department held a specific meeting where Central Bedfordshire officials provided an update on the progress of its three to two tier transition.
No Ministerial meetings were held in 2023 or 2024 with Central Bedfordshire Council to discuss its plans to move from a three to two-tier educational system.
Asked by: Sarah Green (Liberal Democrat - Chesham and Amersham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to review her Department's decision to end funding for employer contributions to the teachers' pension scheme for music teachers employed by non-local authority music hubs.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
As part of the competition of the Music Hubs programme, Arts Council England informed potential bidders on 15 June 2023 that department funding would be made up of the revenue and capital grants only, and that there would not be additional funding to contribute to the cost of the Teachers’ Pension Scheme (TPS) for Music Hub lead organisations that are not local authorities from September 2024. The Arts Council also published indicative allocations for the 43 new Music Hub areas.
In light of the increase in employer contributions to TPS from April 2024, the department will take steps to determine the level of employer liability across all the newly appointed Hub Lead Organisations from September 2024. This has not been possible until recently, as applicants were informed of the outcome of the Music Hubs Investment Programme on 8 April 2024. The department will then work with Arts Council England to set final Music Hub grant allocations for the 2024/25 academic year and, as part of this work, due consideration will be given to additional pension pressures due to the increase in employer contribution to the TPS.
Asked by: Andrew Gwynne (Labour - Denton and Reddish)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 13 March 2024 to Questions 15600 and 15601 on Children in Care and Foster Care, if she will publish the number of children looked after who were cared for in a (a) relative and (b) friend foster placement by (i) age, (ii) gender, (iii) ethnicity and (iv) local authority level as of 31 March 2023.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The latest figures on children looked after who were cared for in a relative or friend foster placement by age, gender and ethnicity and at local authority level are shown in the attached tables. The department does not hold the data broken down separately into relative foster placements and friend foster placements. Therefore, the combined totals have been provided. Data has been provided for children looked after on 31 March 2023.
Asked by: Daniel Zeichner (Labour - Cambridge)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if her Department will review and amend the criteria for student finance applications based on compelling personal reasons to ensure they offer appropriate flexibility where students experience unavoidable delays beyond a single academic year in completing their course of study.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
Generally, standard entitlement to fee support on full time courses will be available for the duration of the course, plus one extra year if needed.
If a student needs to repeat a year of study due to compelling personal reasons (CPR), they may be entitled to an additional year of tuition fee funding, in addition to their standard entitlement. Only one such year can be awarded at a time. However, if the student fails the repeat year and Student Finance England (SFE) determines that the CPR criteria have been met, a further CPR year may be awarded.
Additionally, the regulations allow a current system student, who did not complete their previous, most recent course due to CPR to access fee support for one additional year. This fee support for an additional year will be provided in respect to the first year that the student takes of the current course. Provided that it was the most recent course that the student withdrew from for CPR, it does not matter how long ago they withdrew from that course.
The decision to award fee support due to CPR is for SFE to make based on the evidence provided and the individual merits of each case.
Asked by: Jonathan Ashworth (Labour (Co-op) - Leicester South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, with reference to the policy paper entitled Transforming for a digital future: 2022 to 2025 roadmap for digital and data, updated on 29 February 2024, what steps (a) her Department and (b) the Student Loans Company have taken to mitigate the risks of red-rated legacy IT systems.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The Central Digital and Data Office (CDDO), in the Cabinet Office, has established a programme to support departments managing legacy IT. CDDO has agreed a framework to identify ‘red-rated’ systems, indicating high levels of risk surrounding certain assets within the IT estate. Departments have committed to have remediation plans in place for these systems by next year (2025).
It is not appropriate to release sensitive information held about specific red-rated systems or more detailed plans for remediation within the department’s IT estate, as this information could indicate which systems are at risk, and may highlight potential security vulnerabilities.
Asked by: Rosie Duffield (Labour - Canterbury)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing non-repayable maintenance grants for higher education students from the least advantaged backgrounds.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The government believes that income contingent student loans are a fair and sensible way of financing higher education (HE). It is only right that those who benefit from the system should make a fair contribution to its costs. The government have continued to increase maximum loans and grants for living and other costs for undergraduate and postgraduate students each year, with a 2.8% increase for the 2023/24 academic year and a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.
In addition, the government have frozen maximum tuition fees for the 2023/24 and 2024/25 academic years. By 2024/25, maximum fees will have been frozen for seven successive years. The department believe that the current fee freeze achieves the best balance between ensuring that the system remains financially sustainable, offering good value for the taxpayer, and reducing debt levels for students in real terms.
The government understands the pressures people have been facing with the cost of living and has taken action to help. The government have already made £276 million of student premium and mental health funding available for the 2023/24 academic year to support successful outcomes for students including disadvantaged students.
The government have also made a further £10 million of support available to help student mental health and hardship funding for the 2023/24 academic year. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. For the 2024/25 financial year, the government have increased the Student Premium (full-time, part-time, and disabled premium) by £5 million to reflect high demand for hardship support. Further details of this allocation for the academic year 2024/25 will be announced by the Office for Students in the summer.
Overall, support to households to help with the high cost of living is worth £108 billion over 2022/23 to 2024/25, which is an average of £3,800 per UK household. The government believes this will have eased the pressure on family budgets, which will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.
Asked by: Munira Wilson (Liberal Democrat - Twickenham)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will make an assessment of the potential implications for her policies of the number of schools that recorded zero young carers in their most recent school census return; and what steps her Department is taking to improve the identification of young carers in schools.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The most recent published census data on young carers is from January 2023, and can be found here: https://explore-education-statistics.service.gov.uk/find-statistics/school-pupils-and-their-characteristics/2022-23.
You can find the number of young carers in each school in column JF of the school level underlying data file – see ‘School level underlying data - 2022/23 (csv, 22 Mb)’ under the heading ‘Additional supporting files’. 17,093 of the total 21,642 state-funded schools recorded no young carers. Statistics from the January 2024 school census will be published in June.
As this is a new data collection, the department expects the quality of the data returns to improve over time as the collection becomes established. All schools, except nursery schools, must send this information as part of the Spring school census. However, the recording and handling of the information is at the school’s discretion. In 2023, 79% of schools recorded no young carers.
Young carers make an enormous contribution in caring for their loved ones. The department wants to ensure that they are supported in their education and can take advantage of opportunities beyond their caring responsibilities.
The department added young carers to the annual school census in 2023, raising the visibility of young carers in the school system and, in time, providing the department with hard evidence on both the numbers of young carers and their educational outcomes.
The department will be incorporating young carers in the school-level annual school census for independent schools from early 2024 to ensure parity with the school census, which further builds on the department’s data on young carers across the school system.
The government has published information on how and where young carers can get help and support, encouraging them to speak to someone they trust at their school or college, like a teacher or school nurse, about their caring responsibilities and how this might affect them. As set out in ‘Keeping children safe in education’, the department require Designated Safeguarding Leads to undergo training to provide them with the knowledge and skills to carry out their role, which includes having a good understanding of, and alertness to, the needs of young carers. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2.