Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how many schools in Birkenhead have received funds from the allocation of £26 million for additional breakfast provision since March 2018.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Information from the programme is still being collected and data on funding at local authority level is not available at this stage. We will review the effectiveness of the programme once it has fully concluded.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, whether the forthcoming strategy for ESOL will ensure that all refugees can access a minimum of eight hours a week of formal, accredited English language teaching for their first two years in the UK.
Answered by Anne Milton
The government recognises that learning English is essential in enabling refugees to rebuild their lives. We are working across government to develop a new strategy for English for speakers of other languages (ESOL) in 2019, which will include addressing the needs of refugees.
The department funds ESOL through the Adult Education Budget, which is allocated to providers on an annual basis. Colleges and adult learning providers have the freedom and flexibility to determine how they use their Adult Education Budget allocation to meet the needs of their communities and this includes planning, with local partners, the ESOL courses that they will deliver locally.
The Home Office and Department for Education have provided £10 million to enable refugees resettled through the Vulnerable Persons Resettlement Scheme to access additional classes.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the average waiting time was for a SEND assessment after a child was referred by a teacher in the most recent period for which figures are available.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Schools (and further education colleges, sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies) are required to identify and address the special educational needs (SEN) of the pupils they support and to use their best endeavours to make sure that a child or young person who has SEN gets the support they need. This is outlined in the statutory SEN Code of Practice.
The school should assess the child, plan an intervention if a learning difficulty is identified, implement the intervention and then review the outcome and progressively repeat this cycle until the child’s learning difficulty is properly supported. This type of support is called SEN Support and the cyclical process is referred to as a ‘graduated approach’ to meeting children’s needs. This process should take place regardless of whether a child has been referred for an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment by the local authority.
Information regarding the average waiting time and the average cost of SEND assessments is not held by the department. However, information is published on the number and percentage of new education, health and care plans that are issued within 20 weeks of referral in the annual ‘Statements of SEN and EHC plans’ statistical release. Information for the most recent period is published in table 8 of the release found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2018.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what support is available for a pupil waiting for a SEND assessment; and what the average cost was per pupil receiving such an assessment in the most recent period for which figures are available..
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Schools (and further education colleges, sixth form colleges and 16-19 academies) are required to identify and address the special educational needs (SEN) of the pupils they support and to use their best endeavours to make sure that a child or young person who has SEN gets the support they need. This is outlined in the statutory SEN Code of Practice.
The school should assess the child, plan an intervention if a learning difficulty is identified, implement the intervention and then review the outcome and progressively repeat this cycle until the child’s learning difficulty is properly supported. This type of support is called SEN Support and the cyclical process is referred to as a ‘graduated approach’ to meeting children’s needs. This process should take place regardless of whether a child has been referred for an education, health and care (EHC) needs assessment by the local authority.
Information regarding the average waiting time and the average cost of SEND assessments is not held by the department. However, information is published on the number and percentage of new education, health and care plans that are issued within 20 weeks of referral in the annual ‘Statements of SEN and EHC plans’ statistical release. Information for the most recent period is published in table 8 of the release found at the following link: https://www.gov.uk/government/statistics/statements-of-sen-and-ehc-plans-england-2018.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what the change in the level of spending on SEND provision per pupil with special educational needs or disabilities has been since 2015.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
We do not collect information on the spending by schools on individual pupils with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND). Support for those with more complex SEND are funded through the local authorities high needs budgets.
Our total high needs funding allocations since 2015 are:
Year | Amount |
2015-16 | £5.2 billion |
2016-17 | £5.3 billion |
2017-18 | £5.8 billion |
2018-19* | £6.1 billion |
2019-20* | £6.3 billion |
The amounts between financial years are not directly comparable due to structural changes in the high needs funding baseline.
*Both of these years include £125 million additional funding, which was announced in December 2018.
The total level of local authorities’ high needs gross expenditure, not including place funding, can be found in the section 251 outturn data, and these are as follows:
Year | Amount |
2015-16 | £3.96 billion |
2016-17 | £4.21 billion |
2017-18 | £4.50 billion |
2018-19* | £4.46 billion |
*These years use high needs budget data, rather than outturn data, as we have not yet published the high needs outturns.
The majority of high needs funding is directed towards pupils with education, health and care plans (EHCP). The number of pupils each year with plans can be found in the school census data, which is published in January. The numbers for each year are as follows:
Year | Number |
2015 | 240,163 |
2016 | 256,315 |
2017 | 287,290 |
2018 | 319,819 |
The number of pupils with SEND in 2019 has not yet been published. This figure is an amalgamation of EHCP and Statements of SEND, but this does not include Learning Difficulty Assessments (LDA), and so is not an accurate comparison year-on-year. LDAs were phased out with the introduction of EHCPs, and the last LDAs were phased out of the system in 2016.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, if he will make an assessment of the potential merits of rolling over any unspent funds on the cards of children entitled to free school meals, at the end of each week, so that they can be used the following week.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
Free school meals (FSM) are intended as a benefit in kind, rather than a cash benefit, and our primary interest is that schools meet their legal duties to provide nutritious free lunches to eligible children.
We trust school leaders to make the best decisions in the interests of their pupils and it is right that they have flexibility around how they deliver FSM.
We are, of course, very keen to ensure that all eligible children receive their full entitlement to FSM. We are also interested to hear about new and creative steps schools are taking to support eligible children. It is important that children are claiming their free lunch each day and that schools and colleges operating this system to avoid any risk of children building up significant cash reserves on their accounts or regularly spending their allowances at other times of the day without receiving a healthy lunch.
We would not wish to instruct schools to do any specific approach nationally. However, we will consider how we can share the very best practice around FSM.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, how much money was allocated from the public purse towards the provision of free school meals in (a) England, (b) Scotland, (c) Wales and (d) Northern Ireland in the most recent financial year for which data is available.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
For benefits-based free school meals (FSM) the department allocates around £440 per pupil per year currently eligible for and claiming FSM through the national funding formula to local authorities.
Local authorities then distribute this money to schools through their local funding formula, which is set in consultation with schools. For 2018-19, local authorities collectively allocated £505 million in respect of pupils currently eligible for FSM.
For the academic year 2017/2018 - the latest year in which data is available - the Department for Education spent £649 million delivering free meals for all infant children in reception, year 1 and year 2 in state funded schools through the universal infant free school meals policy.
FSM are fully devolved so the department does not hold information on how much was spent in Scotland, Wales or Northern Ireland.
Asked by: Lord Field of Birkenhead (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask the Secretary of State for Education, what steps he is taking to prevent children and young people in Birkenhead from being criminally exploited by organised crime networks.
Answered by Nadhim Zahawi
The government is committed to taking action against all forms of child exploitation.
The department has commissioned the new ‘Tackling Child Exploitation’ support programme to provide dedicated expertise, advice and practical support to safeguarding partners in local areas to help them develop an effective multi-agency response to a range of child exploitation threats including child sexual exploitation and child criminal exploitation.
By June 2019 all local areas are required to publish new multi-agency safeguarding arrangements that will safeguard and promote the well-being of all children in their area. Under the new duty, the local authority, police and health must work together to put in place robust arrangements to respond to all safeguarding concerns that affect their area, including child criminal exploitation. They will report their actions and progress in their published annual reports.
To support local practitioners in preventing children and young people from being criminally exploited statutory safeguarding guidance documents ‘Working Together to Safeguard Children’ and ‘Keeping Children Safe in Education’ were revised last year to reflect extra familial threats to children. Exploitation threats to children were also reflected in our communications campaign ‘Together We Can Tackle Child Abuse’.
The Department for Education is making Relationships Education compulsory in all primary schools, Relationships and Sex Education (RSE) compulsory in all secondary schools and Health Education compulsory in all state-funded schools, from September 2020. New content, that all children and young people will be taught, includes exploitation. In addition, the department is taking action to tackle persistent absence, reviewing exclusions practice, updating school security guidance and improving the quality of our schools and children’s social care services. We are also in discussion with the Home Office and the National Police Chiefs’ Council to identify best practice and how we can encourage police-school partnership working.