Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2024 to Question 19580 on Music: Education, when she plans to announce the funding rates and allocations to cover the increase in employer contribution rates for existing non-local authority Music Hubs until August 2024.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
In light of the increase in employer contributions to the Teacher’s Pension Scheme (TPS) from April 2024, the department will take steps to determine the level of employer liability across all the newly appointed Music 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 in giving due consideration to the additional pension pressures due to the increase in employer contribution to the TPS. The outcome of this assessment will be published in the coming months.
The department has already secured £1.25 billion to support eligible settings with the increased TPS employer contribution rate in the 2024/25 financial year. This will mean additional funding of £9.3 million to local authorities for centrally employed teachers, including those employed in local authority based music hubs. The department has now published the details of the additional funding for mainstream schools, high needs and local authorities with centrally employed teachers.
The department has also committed to providing funding to cover the increase in employer contribution rates for non-local authority hubs for the current academic year to August 2024 and Arts Council England has communicated allocations to the relevant hub lead organisations.
Asked by: Barbara Keeley (Labour - Worsley and Eccles South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, pursuant to the Answer of 25 March 2024 to Question 19580 on Music: Education, what assessment her Department has made of the ability of non-local authority Music Hubs to pay for employer contribution rates after August 2024.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
In light of the increase in employer contributions to the Teacher’s Pension Scheme (TPS) from April 2024, the department will take steps to determine the level of employer liability across all the newly appointed Music 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 in giving due consideration to the additional pension pressures due to the increase in employer contribution to the TPS. The outcome of this assessment will be published in the coming months.
The department has already secured £1.25 billion to support eligible settings with the increased TPS employer contribution rate in the 2024/25 financial year. This will mean additional funding of £9.3 million to local authorities for centrally employed teachers, including those employed in local authority based music hubs. The department has now published the details of the additional funding for mainstream schools, high needs and local authorities with centrally employed teachers.
The department has also committed to providing funding to cover the increase in employer contribution rates for non-local authority hubs for the current academic year to August 2024 and Arts Council England has communicated allocations to the relevant hub lead organisations.
Asked by: Navendu Mishra (Labour - Stockport)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment her Department has made of the impact of increases in the cost of living on the accessibility of higher education for students in Greater Manchester.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
The government publishes an Equality Impact Assessment (EIA) is each year to analyse the impact of changes to higher education (HE) student support in England on students with protected characteristics and those from low-income families. The EIA for the 2024/25 academic year was published on GOV.UK on 26 January 2024 and is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/higher-education-student-finance-2024-to-2025-equality-analysis.
The department has 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 current academic year, 2023/24, and a further 2.5% increase announced for 2024/25.
In addition, the department has 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 believes 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 department has 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 department has also made a further £10 million of one-off support available to support student mental health and hardship funding for 2023/24. This funding will complement the help universities are providing through their own bursary, scholarship and hardship support schemes. For this financial year, 2024/25, the department has 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 (OfS) 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, an average of £3,800 per UK household. The government believes this will have eased the pressure on family budgets and so will in turn enable many families to provide additional support to their children in HE to help them meet increased living costs.
English domiciled 18 year olds from the most disadvantaged areas are now 74% more likely to enter HE than they were in 2010, and the department is working to close the disadvantage gap with our access and participation reforms.
The department has tasked the OfS to include support for disadvantaged students before entry to HE in new access and participation plans. Providers should be working meaningfully with schools to ensure that pupils from disadvantaged backgrounds are encouraged and supported to achieve the highest possible grades and follow the path that is best for them, whether that be an apprenticeship or higher technical qualification, or a course at another university.
Asked by: Ian Byrne (Labour - Liverpool, West Derby)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether she plans to remove the 50% cap on faith-based admissions at (a) academies and (b) free schools.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The diversity of schools in this country is one of our education system’s most valuable assets and faith schools play a pivotal role in that by providing high-quality school places and choice for parents. This government remains committed in its support for faith schools.
Faith school providers, including churches, are among the largest providers of academy trusts. As the department moves to an education system that is increasingly based on schools being part of strong academy trusts, the department needs to ensure that it is making the best and full use of the talents of all trusts. This includes having mechanism in place for all providers to open new schools.
As the department continues to uphold diversity and quality education for all, it is keeping all policies, including the 50% faith admissions cap for free schools with a faith designation, under review to ensure that this country’s education system is world leading.
Asked by: David Evennett (Conservative - Bexleyheath and Crayford)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department are taking to encourage businesses to invest in skills training.
Answered by Luke Hall - Minister of State (Education)
This government is committed to delivering a world-leading skills system which is employer-focused, high-quality, and fit for the future. The department’s reforms are backed with an investment of £3.8 billion over the course of this Parliament to strengthen higher and further education to help more people get good jobs, upskill and retrain throughout their lives and to improve national productivity.
Over 5,000 employers have been involved in the development of nearly 700 high-quality apprenticeships to meet their industry skills needs. To support employers of all sizes offer apprenticeships, the government has increased investment in apprenticeships to over £2.7 billion in the 2024/25 financial year. This includes investing a further £60 million to meet overall increased employer demand for apprenticeships and encourage small-medium enterprises (SMEs) to take on young apprentices.
From April, the department pays 100% of training costs when SMEs take on new apprentices aged 16-21. Additionally, larger employers can now transfer more of their levy funds (50% increased from 25%) to support businesses of all sizes, which will help more employers to invest in apprenticeship training.
Skills Bootcamps offer free, flexible courses of up to 16 weeks, giving people the chance to build sector-specific skills with an offer of a job interview on completion. Training providers work with employers to ensure training is designed to teach the skills employers need. To date, over 1000 employers have been involved in Skills Bootcamps. Employers play a range of roles from supporting the design and delivery of the training, to recruiting learners that complete training into a job, or an apprenticeship. Employers can also use Skills Bootcamps to upskill their existing employees, subject to a 10% contribution for SMEs and 30% contribution for large employers.
Institutes of Technology bring education and business closer together, creating unique collaborations between colleges, universities and industry which deliver higher-level technical education with a clear route to high skilled employment. The department has provided £300 million of capital funding for infrastructure and industry standard equipment to increase capacity to deliver level 4/5 technical skills. In addition, employer partners were encouraged to provide additional support (monetary and in kind) which for the wave 2 competition was set at 35% of value of capital expenditure.
In October 2023, the department launched a new website called Skills for Careers that provides a single digital front door to information about skills training options and careers. A link to Skills for Careers can be found here: https://www.skillsforcareers.education.gov.uk/pages/skills-for-life. From Skills for Careers, users are guided through government’s skills offer from apprenticeships to Skills Bootcamps, A levels to Multiply. The website provides an overview of each option along with information about writing job applications and CVs.
Across all areas of England, employer-led Local Skills Improvement Plans (LSIPs) have helped engage thousands of local businesses and have brought them together with local providers and stakeholders to collaboratively agree and deliver actions to address local skills needs. By giving employers a more strategic role in the skills system, LSIPs are helping to drive greater employer investment in skills and ensure businesses are more actively involved in the planning, design and delivery of skills provision.
Departmental officials are also working with the Office for Investment and Department for Business and Trade to provide support for investors to navigate the skills system at a national and local level and encourage take-up of government funded skills programmes and employer investment in skills, as well as build strategic partnerships with local education and training providers. Whilst it is not a core part of their role, some of the designated employer representative bodies leading the LSIPs have engaged with inward investors as part of developing and implementing their LSIPs.
Asked by: Daisy Cooper (Liberal Democrat - St Albans)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what recent assessment she has made of the adequacy of the process used by examination boards to award marks for spelling, punctuation and grammar for children who use a scribe in exams.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
This is a matter for the Office of Qualifications and Examinations Regulation (Ofqual). The department has asked its Chief Regulator, Sir Ian Bauckham CBE, to write to the hon. Member for St Albans and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.
Asked by: Mark Hendrick (Labour (Co-op) - Preston)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of not increasing pupil premium funding in line with inflation on disadvantaged students.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
Pupil premium funding is rising to over £2.9 billion in 2024/25, an increase of around £90 million from 2023 to 2024. In 2024/25 the pupil premium funding rate for primary pupils is £1,480, and £1,050 for secondary pupils. Looked-after, and previously looked-after, children attract a higher rate of £2,570.
These rates for 2024/25 were an increase of 1.7% on those for 2023/24. This increase was in line with inflation as measured by the GDP deflator forecasts when the rates were announced for 2024/25. As the inflation forecast for 2024/25 has since reduced, the increase in pupil premium rates of 1.7% is now higher than the latest inflation forecast.
This increase ensures that this target funding continues to help schools to support disadvantaged pupils and close attainment gaps.
Asked by: Bridget Phillipson (Labour - Houghton and Sunderland South)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if she will publish her Department's results in the civil service people survey questions on leadership and managing change for each of the last 14 years.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department’s results for each of the questions in the Civil Service People Survey relating to leadership and managing change are published online:
Asked by: Carla Lockhart (Democratic Unionist Party - Upper Bann)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what her planned timetable is for publication of the latest Relationships, Sex, Health and Education statutory guidance.
Answered by Damian Hinds - Minister of State (Education)
The department aims to be in a position to publish a draft of the guidance for the consultation very shortly so that the new guidance will be available as soon as possible this year.
Asked by: Alexander Stafford (Conservative - Rother Valley)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps her Department is taking to support the early learning and development of children at home.
Answered by David Johnston - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Education)
The department is investing over £300 million to enable 75 local authorities to create family hubs, and to improve vital services to give every baby the best start in life, including support for parenting, perinatal mental health and parent infant relationships, and infant feeding. An additional £29 million has been made available to these local authorities to improve early language development, by supporting parents to help their children learn at home through the provision of evidence-based support with home learning.
In January 2024, the department launched a national campaign ‘Little Moments Together.’ It offers free resources and advice for parents to enhance children’s language and communication development on the NHS Better Health Start for Life website at: https://www.nhs.uk/start-for-life/early-learning-development/. The department’s focus is on educating parents about brain development in the first five years of life, and the crucial role they play. The campaign encourages parents to chat, play, and read more with their children, suggesting ways to fit opportunities into their busy schedules in and around the home. The ‘Little Moments Together’ campaign can be viewed online at: https://campaignresources.dhsc.gov.uk/campaigns/better-health-start-for-life/better-health-start-for-life-home-learning-environment-2024/.
In addition, the department is working with early years national voluntary and community sector partners, including the National Literacy Trust, to assist family hubs to deliver home learning support to disadvantaged and low-income families. The department has provided £4.5 million in grant funding for partners to develop resources using the ‘Little Moments Together’ campaign messaging, offer peer-led activities directly to parents, and to engage with disadvantaged groups locally on home learning through the developing family hub networks.