Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what is their strategy to reduce inequality in education; and how any strategy will include adult community learning providers who already provide support to disadvantaged and vulnerable communities.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The independent panel’s report forms an important step in the government’s Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and engage with stakeholders before concluding the review at the Spending Review.
The Adult Education Budget aims to provide adults with the skills and learning that they need to equip them for work, an apprenticeship or other learning. It enables flexible tailored programmes, which may or may not require a qualification, to be made available to help eligible adults to undertake in learning programmes, build their confidence and enhance their wellbeing. This includes community learning and funding to help learners overcome barriers to learning, such as financial hardship or learning difficulties or disabilities. The department is considering adult skills more widely in preparation for the upcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what support they (1) make, and (2) plan to make, available to adult learners who wish to study without the intention of obtaining a qualification.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The independent panel’s report forms an important step in the government’s Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and engage with stakeholders before concluding the review at the Spending Review.
The Adult Education Budget aims to provide adults with the skills and learning that they need to equip them for work, an apprenticeship or other learning. It enables flexible tailored programmes, which may or may not require a qualification, to be made available to help eligible adults to undertake in learning programmes, build their confidence and enhance their wellbeing. This includes community learning and funding to help learners overcome barriers to learning, such as financial hardship or learning difficulties or disabilities. The department is considering adult skills more widely in preparation for the upcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they will support adult learning at entry level and pre-qualification level to help those who want to develop the skills and confidence to progress to higher level qualifications, as recommended in the independent panel report to the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The independent panel’s report forms an important step in the government’s Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and engage with stakeholders before concluding the review at the Spending Review.
The Adult Education Budget aims to provide adults with the skills and learning that they need to equip them for work, an apprenticeship or other learning. It enables flexible tailored programmes, which may or may not require a qualification, to be made available to help eligible adults to undertake in learning programmes, build their confidence and enhance their wellbeing. This includes community learning and funding to help learners overcome barriers to learning, such as financial hardship or learning difficulties or disabilities. The department is considering adult skills more widely in preparation for the upcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they will take to ensure that community adult learning providers are included alongside further education colleges in any future national adult education network, following the recommendation in the independent panel report to the Review of Post-18 Education and Funding.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The independent panel’s report forms an important step in the government’s Review of Post-18 Education and Funding. The government will consider the panel’s recommendations carefully and engage with stakeholders before concluding the review at the Spending Review.
The Adult Education Budget aims to provide adults with the skills and learning that they need to equip them for work, an apprenticeship or other learning. It enables flexible tailored programmes, which may or may not require a qualification, to be made available to help eligible adults to undertake in learning programmes, build their confidence and enhance their wellbeing. This includes community learning and funding to help learners overcome barriers to learning, such as financial hardship or learning difficulties or disabilities. The department is considering adult skills more widely in preparation for the upcoming Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the proposal by the retailer Timpsons for a more flexible approach to the apprenticeship levy that does not require the use of pre-approved, often non-specialised, training providers in order to qualify for a grant.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Our apprenticeship reforms have put employers in the driving seat, empowering them to design new high-quality standards that give apprentices the skills that employers need. We are replacing old-style apprenticeship frameworks, which employers told us were not equipping apprentices to do the job. There are now over 420 industry-designed standards available for employers to use. We’ve seen strong uptake of these new standards; during the first half of 2018/19 nearly 60% of apprenticeship starts were on them.
We have introduced the levy to create long-term sustainable investment in high-quality apprenticeship training. Employers are able to choose how to spend their levy, so long as they spend it on apprenticeships. It is important that we maximise the effectiveness of government investment in training and our reforms are making sure that apprenticeships are delivering the high-quality training that both individuals and employers need.
We have introduced the register of apprenticeship training providers to give employers assurance that the training received by apprentices will be of a high quality. The register ensures that only providers who are appropriately skilled, ready to deliver, and financially stable can access apprenticeship funding. Employers who want to directly deliver apprenticeship training to their own employees can apply to the register, which remains open for applications.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to encourage the use of school libraries and reading for pleasure in primary and secondary schools.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
It is for individual schools to decide whether to provide and maintain a library service for their pupils. Many head teachers recognise the important role school libraries play in improving literacy and encouraging pupils to read for pleasure and ensure that suitable library facilities are provided. The current national curriculum, introduced from 2014, places greater emphasis on pupils developing the habit of reading widely and often, for both pleasure and information, as they move through key stage 1 into key stage 2, having first mastered the essentials of phonic decoding. Pupils should read for themselves a wide range of stories, poems, plays and information books. From 2016 the end of key stage 2 reading assessment was changed to reflect this more rigorous curriculum.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to promote and support bookshops to improve levels of literacy.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The department does not have any policies that specifically target bookshops. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education, has set an ambition to halve the proportion of children who finish reception without the language and literacy skills needed to thrive by 2028. As part of this, we will be launching a public-facing campaign later this year to improve the quality and quantity of parent-child interactions and make it easy for parents to chat, play and read with their children. This includes working closely with the National Literacy Trust, businesses and libraries to improve access to books.
In partnership with the Education Endowment Foundation, we are also investing over £4 million to home learning environment trials in the north of England. The trials range from an intensive home visiting programme aimed at improving early literacy, to a texting initiative intended to nudge parents to do more activities that help develop literacy, numeracy and socio-emotional skills.
As part of the £26.3 million English hubs programme, participating schools will also receive support to improve teaching of English as an additional language phonics and to ensure children have access to decodable books for the early stages of reading.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the Social Mobility Pledge; and what steps they are taking to support its uptake by employers.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The Social Mobility Pledge (SMP) initiative represents an excellent opportunity for businesses to become SMP accredited employers, by committing to enhance support for people from disadvantaged backgrounds.
We recognise the importance of the pledge. It fits with the aims of the government’s own strategies for social mobility. We are leading by example - the attached Civil Service Workforce Plan sets out how government provides exemplary leadership on social mobility as an employer and leads the way for other organisations. In addition, the department was ranked 18th out of 106 employers who submitted entries to the 2018 Social Mobility Employer Index. This index ranks Britain’s employers on the actions they are taking to improve access and progression.
We offer similar initiatives to the SMP which supports employers to improve social mobility. For example, the Department for Education’s ‘Skills Partner’ initiative encourages employers to sign a statement of action with the government, demonstrating collective commitment to a strong skills programme that gives every individual the opportunity to succeed.
Asked by: Lord Bird (Crossbench - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that every primary and secondary school is equipped with an adequate school library.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
It is for individual schools to decide whether to provide and maintain a library service for their pupils. It is clear, however, that many head teachers recognise the important role school libraries play in improving literacy and encouraging pupils to read for pleasure and ensure that suitable library facilities are provided. The 2016 Progress in International Reading Literacy Study indicated that 92% of year 5 pupils in England were attending a school where there was a library. This was above the international average of 87%.