Asked by: Baroness Pinnock (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether (1) academies, (2) free schools and (3) independent schools have powers to fund the cost of school crossing patrols.
Answered by Lord Nash
Academies and free schools have powers in their funding agreements to pay for school crossing patrols, if they choose to do so. The model funding agreement provides that an Academy Trust can spend General Annual Grant on the normal running costs of the academy, this can include spending on school crossing patrols.
Under section 50 of the School Standards and Framework Act 1998, local authority maintained schools can also undertake lawful activity that is for the purpose of the school, including paying for school crossing patrols. Independent schools are private bodies and can also fund school crossing patrols.
Asked by: Baroness Pinnock (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government whether consideration has been given to amending the regulations in the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2013 which specifically exclude the use of a local authority’s non-schools education budget for funding school crossing patrols.
Answered by Lord Nash
As spending on school crossing patrols is classified, for accounting purposes, as local transport spending rather than education services, it would not be appropriate to include school crossing patrols in the School and Early Years Finance (England) Regulations 2013 to enable such patrols to be funded from local authority schools or non-schools education budgets.
However, local authorities are able to fund school crossing patrols from other non-ring fenced resources such as council tax and business rate income made available through the local government finance settlement. Additionally, there is nothing to stop schools using their delegated budgets to fund a service that is not strictly educational but clearly in the interest of the school, such as health services, transport or crossing patrols.
Asked by: Baroness Pinnock (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to provide funding to implement the pledge made in their manifesto, and the duty on the Secretary of State in the Childcare Act 2016, to extend the number of free childcare hours for working families.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Government will be investing over £1billion more per year by 2019-20 to fund our commitments on the early years entitlements. This includes £300million per year from 2017-18 for a significant increase to the hourly rate paid for the two-, three- and four-year-old entitlements.
It is vital that funding for these entitlements is fairly distributed between different parts of the country and different types of providers. That is why we have recently consulted on our proposals for a national funding formula for these services. Our proposals will ensure that funding is based on the costs of meeting the needs of local children, not on historic spending patterns.
We are currently considering all responses to the consultation, and are planning to publish the Government’s response soon.
Asked by: Baroness Pinnock (Liberal Democrat - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government, further to the Written Answer by Lord Nash on 14 March (HL7000, HL7001 and HL7002), when they expect to publish the outcome of the public consultation, particularly in relation to the issues raised in the 2015 Annual Report of the Office of the Chief Schools Adjudicator.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Government has not undertaken a consultation on this matter as yet. We are considering possible changes to the admissions system; any changes will be subject to a full statutory process.