Department for Education

The department actively reviews historic provisions to ensure that the Teachers’ Pension Scheme remains fair for all and, if necessary, take steps to rectify where discrimination has been identified. The Preston cases, which were rectified in the 1990s, and the Goodwin cases, which were rectified in 2021, are cases in point.

The department does not have plans to review any specific historic provisions at present.

Changes to the maternity participation rules were provided in legislation in 1994 and 1995 and widely consulted on. The scheme administrator, Teachers’ Pensions, continue to issue guidance to local authorities and employers to ensure compliance and to manage claims effectively.

The department actively reviews historic provisions to ensure that the Teachers’ Pension Scheme remains fair for all and, if necessary, take steps to rectify where discrimination has been identified. The Preston cases, which were rectified in the 1990s, and the Goodwin cases, which were rectified in 2021, are cases in point.

The department does not have plans to review any specific historic provisions at present.

Changes to the maternity participation rules were provided in legislation in 1994 and 1995 and widely consulted on. The scheme administrator, Teachers’ Pensions, continue to issue guidance to local authorities and employers to ensure compliance and to manage claims effectively.

The department actively reviews historic provisions to ensure that the Teachers’ Pension Scheme remains fair for all and, if necessary, take steps to rectify where discrimination has been identified. The Preston cases, which were rectified in the 1990s, and the Goodwin cases, which were rectified in 2021, are cases in point.

The department does not have plans to review any specific historic provisions at present.

Changes to the maternity participation rules were provided in legislation in 1994 and 1995 and widely consulted on. The scheme administrator, Teachers’ Pensions, continue to issue guidance to local authorities and employers to ensure compliance and to manage claims effectively.

The number of free schools that have been opened through the free school presumption process since July 2024 is as follows:

For comparison, the number of presumption free schools that were established in the previous academic year (2023/24) was:

Information on young carers was first collected through the school census in spring 2023. Since then, we have seen year-on-year improvements in the identification of pupils who are young carers. The department continues to work closely with schools and their representatives to refine and strengthen the guidance provided and for the 2026 spring school census, we have introduced changes to data validation processes to support more accurate and complete reporting of this information.

The latest information about the number of pupils identified as a young carer is published in the ‘Schools, Pupils and their Characteristics’ statistical release, which is available here: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/schools-pupils-and-their-characteristics-january-2025.

The department is driving major children’s social care reforms to strengthen and improve early intervention, including in cases of childhood neglect. These reforms are backed by £2.4 billion investment, robust statutory guidance ‘Working together to safeguard children’, and support for teachers, social workers and all safeguarding professionals to spot the signs of abuse and neglect more quickly.

Through the Children’s Wellbeing and Schools Bill, we will require local authorities and safeguarding partners to establish multi-agency child protection teams, enhance schools’ role in safeguarding partnership arrangements and introduce provisions that empower my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education to introduce a consistent identifier for children.

In addition, our Best Start Family Hubs will provide welcoming spaces that connect families to health, education, housing and parenting support, helping identify those who need more intensive help from family support and multi-agency child protection.

Our plans to establish a Child Protection Authority in England will also bring further focus to children who are experiencing or likely to experience significant harm, including neglect.

Schools are required under Section 100 of the Children and Families Act 2014 to make arrangements to support pupils with medical conditions, including allergies.

They must have regard to the statutory guidance ‘Supporting pupils at school with medical conditions’, which sets expectations for training and emergency procedures. Governing bodies should ensure that staff receive suitable training to identify and respond to severe allergic reactions, such as anaphylaxis, and that policies and systems are effectively implemented. Ofsted assesses the effectiveness of these arrangements as part of school inspections.

The department maintains oversight of state boarding school policy, which is used to regulate standards in boarding provisions.

The Ministry of Defence oversees the Continuity of Education Allowance for eligible Service Personnel, which provides clearly defined financial support to ensure that the need for frequent mobility does not interfere with a child’s education. This includes supporting parents with the option of using a state boarding school.

The department maintains oversight of state boarding school policy, which is used to regulate standards in boarding provisions.

The Ministry of Defence oversees the Continuity of Education Allowance for eligible Service Personnel, which provides clearly defined financial support to ensure that the need for frequent mobility does not interfere with a child’s education. This includes supporting parents with the option of using a state boarding school.

The department maintains oversight of state boarding school policy, which is used to regulate standards in boarding provisions.

The Ministry of Defence oversees the Continuity of Education Allowance for eligible Service Personnel, which provides clearly defined financial support to ensure that the need for frequent mobility does not interfere with a child’s education. This includes supporting parents with the option of using a state boarding school.

The department has engaged with trusts, local authorities and other stakeholders in relation to individual projects in scope of the review, including reviewing the evidence they have provided. As would be expected from a review of this scale, there have been a significant number of meetings

Schools and colleges have a critical role to play in protecting children and keeping them safe. The department publishes statutory safeguarding guidance Keeping children safe in education (KCSIE) which all schools and colleges must have regard to when carrying out their duties to safeguard and promote the welfare of children.

KCSIE is subject to regular review to ensure it is kept up to date and relevant. We are proposing to make changes to KCSIE 2026 and plan to launch a public consultation very soon.

The department is committed to ensuring parents play a central role in helping shape the future special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) system. We have launched a National Conversation on SEND, gathering the views of parents, young people, educators, and experts through a range of online and in-person events as well as inviting online contributions.

Our SEND regional engagement events bring together diverse stakeholder groups for meaningful dialogue. In addition, we have organised online sessions with my hon. Friend, the Minister for School Standards and expert panels to discuss the department’s five principles of reform.

This is not a formal consultation but an expansion of ongoing engagement to ensure parents’ voices are heard. The Schools White Paper, due early next year, will outline our proposed SEND reforms and will be followed by a formal consultation and further engagement.

The department is committed to restoring confidence in the system of support for children and young people with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) so that they all get the opportunities they need to achieve and thrive in their education. There will always be a legal right to additional support for children and young people with SEND. Any statutory framework is for Parliament to decide on, and any legislative changes will be considered if necessary.

Freezing the Plan 2 repayment and interest rate thresholds for English borrowers means the upper threshold, used for calculating the variable portion of Plan 2 interest rates, will be lower than previously projected. This means more borrowers will be charged the highest rate of interest but only where their income increases.

The department does not break down estimates of loan borrower numbers by the rate of interest paid.

This is a matter for His Majesty’s Chief Inspector, Sir Martyn Oliver. I have asked him to write to my hon. Friend, the Member for Redditch directly and a copy of his reply will be placed in the Libraries of both Houses.

The department’s home to school travel policy aims to make sure that no child is prevented from accessing education by a lack of transport. Local authorities are responsible for arranging free home to school travel for eligible children. A child is eligible if they are of compulsory school age, 5 to 16, attend their nearest school and would not be able to walk there because of the distance, their special educational need, disability or mobility problem, or because the nature of the route means it would be unsafe for them to do so. There are extended rights to free travel for children from low-income families.

In addition, the Bus Services Act 2025 puts the power over local bus services back in the hands of local leaders right across England. This will enable them to ensure local bus services meet the needs of local communities, including supporting access to education.

No assessment has been made of whether pupils’ access to high-quality play opportunities during the school day varies by school funding levels, geographic location or deprivation.

Schools are expected to organise the school day and school week in the best interests of their pupil cohort, to both provide them with a full-time education suitable to their age, aptitude and ability, and to incorporate time for play and other activities.

The department is working to make sure that all children and young people have access to a variety of enrichment opportunities at school, as an important part of our mission to break down barriers to opportunity. A new Enrichment Framework will be published in the coming months. The framework will support schools in developing their enrichment offer by identifying and reflecting effective practice and will provide advice on how to plan a high quality enrichment offer more intentionally and strategically.

All schools are expected to actively promote fundamental British values of democracy, the rule of law, individual liberty, and mutual respect and tolerance for those of different faiths and beliefs.

Schools are free to include a full range of issues, ideas, and materials in their curriculum.

Following the Curriculum and Assessment Review, the government will make citizenship statutory at key stages 1 and 2. Content at primary and secondary will include media literacy, law and rights, democracy and government, to enable children to be informed and active participants in society. Covering these issues in citizenship will ensure we continue to focus on schools’ role in developing fundamental British values, including mutual tolerance and respect.

Proposals will be consulted on from 2026 and we are working towards a first teaching of the new curriculum from September 2028.

The government has tabled an amendment to the Children's Wellbeing and Schools Bill to bring in multi-academy trust inspections. Multi-academy trust inspections will raise standards and enable sharing of best trust-level practice, as well as incentivising and supporting improvement efforts across the sector.

The government intends to specify the intervals for routine trust inspections in secondary legislation, after working closely with Ofsted and the sector to determine what an appropriate period of time would be.

The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.

It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12^th week.

The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.

It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12^th week.

The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.

It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12^th week.

The new iteration of the Supply Teachers and Temporary Staffing framework will remove excessive agency mark-ups through a cap on agency fees.

It will not affect pay for supply teachers employed through agencies. This will continue to be set by agencies in the first 12 weeks of an assignment, and supply teachers are free to register with multiple agencies to find the best pay and conditions to meet their own circumstances. The Agency Worker Regulations provides that all workers on assignments exceeding 12 weeks are paid on equal terms as permanent staff after the 12^th week.

The government is committed to strengthening pupils’ foundational understanding of financial education in mathematics and citizenship following publication of the Curriculum and Assessment Review final report in November 2025. The department will be engaging with sector experts and young people in working out how best to reflect this in the updated curriculum. As part of this work, we will consider appropriate content on pensions and long-term saving.

There will be a public consultation on the updated curriculum in 2026, to seek views on the content before it is finalised.

School leaders and staff have a responsibility to ensure that they act in accordance with their duties on political impartiality. When political issues are discussed, schools must offer pupils a balanced presentation of opposing views and should not present materials in a politically biased or one-sided way.

The department has published clear and comprehensive guidance to help those working with and in schools to understand their legal duties on political impartiality and how to meet them, both in teaching about political issues and beyond the classroom. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools/political-impartiality-in-schools.

The guidance includes advice on how schools can deal with complaints about political impartiality through appropriate local processes. Where parents and carers remain dissatisfied, they can raise a formal complaint in line with school complaints procedures.

School leaders and staff have a responsibility to ensure that they act in accordance with their duties on political impartiality. When political issues are discussed, schools must offer pupils a balanced presentation of opposing views and should not present materials in a politically biased or one-sided way.

The department has published clear and comprehensive guidance to help those working with and in schools to understand their legal duties on political impartiality and how to meet them, both in teaching about political issues and beyond the classroom. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools/political-impartiality-in-schools.

The guidance includes advice on how schools can deal with complaints about political impartiality through appropriate local processes. Where parents and carers remain dissatisfied, they can raise a formal complaint in line with school complaints procedures.

School leaders and staff have a responsibility to ensure that they act in accordance with their duties on political impartiality. When political issues are discussed, schools must offer pupils a balanced presentation of opposing views and should not present materials in a politically biased or one-sided way.

The department has published clear and comprehensive guidance to help those working with and in schools to understand their legal duties on political impartiality and how to meet them, both in teaching about political issues and beyond the classroom. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools/political-impartiality-in-schools.

The guidance includes advice on how schools can deal with complaints about political impartiality through appropriate local processes. Where parents and carers remain dissatisfied, they can raise a formal complaint in line with school complaints procedures.

School leaders and staff have a responsibility to ensure that they act in accordance with their duties on political impartiality. When political issues are discussed, schools must offer pupils a balanced presentation of opposing views and should not present materials in a politically biased or one-sided way.

The department has published clear and comprehensive guidance to help those working with and in schools to understand their legal duties on political impartiality and how to meet them, both in teaching about political issues and beyond the classroom. The guidance can be found here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/political-impartiality-in-schools/political-impartiality-in-schools.

The guidance includes advice on how schools can deal with complaints about political impartiality through appropriate local processes. Where parents and carers remain dissatisfied, they can raise a formal complaint in line with school complaints procedures.

I refer the hon. Member for North Cornwall to the answer of 20 October 2025 to Question 78608.

This government is focused on driving high and rising standards through our Plan for Change, to enable every child to achieve and thrive.

Our targeted regional improvement for standards and excellence (RISE) programme is ensuring schools who need it most are getting the support they need to improve.

Over 360 schools have already benefited from RISE, supported by 65 advisers, experienced leaders across the schools sector.

£4.8 million has been allocated to the RISE Adviser budget for the 2025/26 financial year. Budgets for future years will be set through business planning.

Educational psychologists play a critical role in the support available to children and young people, including those with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). This is why the department has already invested more than £21 million to train 400 more educational psychologists over two cohorts, starting their studies in 2024 and 2025. This is in addition to the £10 million invested in training more than 200 educational psychologists who began their training in September 2023.

As these trainees complete their studies, they will join the workforce to support local authority educational psychology services for a minimum period of three years.

Following a Joint Area SEND inspection in Gloucestershire in December 2023, leaders in the local area have developed a local strategy to improve access to educational psychologists, including a virtual service. Officials and SEND advisors from both the department and NHS England meet regularly with Gloucestershire local area leaders to monitor progress.

All those with statutory responsibilities towards children of service personnel with special education needs and disability (SEND), should ensure that the impact of their policies, administrative processes and patterns of provision do not disadvantage such children when families relocate.

Statutory guidance is clear that when a child moves home across local authority boundaries, the education, health and care plan must be transferred from the ‘old’ local authority to the ‘new’ local authority on the day of the move or within 15 working days from when the old local authority first becomes aware of the move. Upon receiving the plan, the new local authority must arrange the special educational provision set out in it, although a child may have to be placed in a school other than the one named on the plan if the distance of the move makes it impractical to send the child to the named school.

The £30 million saving is based on reducing administrative processes in further education and apprenticeships. Extensive user research with colleges identified activities that could be eliminated or streamlined, including photocopying documentation, manually matching emails with applications, and reducing data entry and correction through improved quality. Other efficiencies include removing support time for paperwork, eliminating manual searches for unique learner numbers, and reducing checks on prior attainment to simplify enrolment for mathematics and English. These changes will also reduce delays caused by missing documentation and cut follow-up activities linked to incomplete records.

£5.5 million has been spent over the last two years. Prior to this, this was part of a wider project looking at options to improve data sharing with the further education sector, looking at cost and burden. One of the options that came from this research was the Education Record.

The Postgraduate Doctoral Loan provides up to £30,301 for courses starting on or after 1 August 2025 and is intended as a contribution to the costs of PhD study.

Students who already have a doctoral degree, or a qualification that’s equivalent or higher, are not eligible for the Postgraduate Doctoral Loan.

There are no plans to change the eligibility criteria of Postgraduate Doctoral Loans.

The department estimates running costs of approximately £1 million per year, based on staff, systems used to store and manage data, and software licences.

The App includes qualifications data that the department receives from Awarding Bodies which form part of the Personal Learning Record. This includes general and vocational qualifications, such as QCF, A levels, GCSEs, BTEC, diplomas and Functional Skills. The department will review use of the app and look at future developments following the national pilot, which may include expanding the content of the App.

Plans for future content have not been developed or tested with Education sector stakeholders.

Further education (FE) providers and the Association of Colleges are supportive of the Education Record and expect this to reduce administrative burden and costs. Once MIS systems are able to read the app digitally and good uptake is reflected among Year 11 students, FE providers are expected to fully adopt the Education Record.

The department currently has no plans to mandate the use of the Education Record.

The department’s statutory guidance for Virtual School Heads sets out what electronic Personal Education Plans (ePEPs) must cover and the outcomes they are intended to support. While we do not mandate or endorse specific ePEP platforms, local authorities, as data controllers, are expected to comply with data protection requirements and safeguarding standards when selecting and using such systems. This means they are responsible for selecting secure platforms that comply with UK GDPR and safeguarding requirements to protect sensitive information about children in care.

In addition, the department’s ‘Data Protection in Schools’ guidance helps the education sector and local authorities understand their legal responsibilities when processing sensitive data. This guidance includes information on complying with UK GDPR, secure data storage and appropriate data sharing, all of which are appropriate to safeguarding children’s personal information.

Departmental officials will be meeting with the Local Government and Social Care Ombudsman to better understand issues with the complaints process, but at present we are not planning to update the complaints guidance. We will, however, publish updated statutory guidance on advocacy services for children, who are making complaints, this year.

On 28 April, my right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, signed commencement regulations, bringing the following provisions into force on 1 August 2025:

• Duties on higher education (HE) providers (and their constituent institutions) to take reasonably practicable steps to secure freedom of speech within the law, to put in place a code of practice on freedom of speech and academic freedom, and to promote freedom of speech.
• The ban on non-disclosure agreements for staff and students at HE providers in cases of bullying, harassment and sexual misconduct.
• The duties on the Office for Students (OfS) to promote freedom of speech and the power to identify good practice and advise HE providers on it.

We are seeking a suitable legislative vehicle to amend and repeal other elements of the Act in due course, including in relation to the complaints scheme.

In the meantime, the OfS published its regulatory guidance on free speech on 19 June 2025. The OfS Director for Freedom of Speech and Academic Freedom continues to work with the sector to offer advice and share best practice, so providers themselves are more effectively protecting free speech and academic freedom.

This government is committed to supporting the aspiration of every person who meets the requirements and wants to attend higher education. We are future proofing our maintenance loan offer by increasing maintenance loans in line with forecast inflation every academic year from 2026/27 onwards, and making all care leavers automatically eligible for the maximum maintenance loan regardless of their income from 2026/27.

We are also introducing new targeted maintenance grants from the 2028/29 academic year, which will provide disadvantaged students with up to £1,000 extra per year, on top of existing maintenance loans, increasing cash in student’s pockets, without increasing their debt.

We need to ensure that student funding system is financially sustainable. Around £20.7 billion of student loans administered by the Student Loans Company were issued in the 2024/25 financial year, of which £9.1 billion of maintenance loans were issued to undergraduate students.

The current system targets the highest levels of support at students with household incomes of £25,000 or less, who need it most.