Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on the attainment of Cadet Expansion Programme targets.
Answered by Baroness Goldie
The Cadet Expansion Programme aimed to have 500 cadet units parading in schools by March 2020. This target was met five months early in November 2019. The Government’s ambition is to now grow the number of cadets attending these units to 60,000 by 2024.
COVID-19 caused the closure of all secondary schools and the suspension of all face-to-face cadet activity from 17 March. Restarting activity in school cadet units will be at the Headteachers’ discretion, subject to Government guidance and will be secondary to efforts to return schools to normal service.
Cadet training personnel from the Services will be available to support school cadet units in returning to activity when Headteachers decide the time is right.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Defence:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to support the cadet forces to resume their normal activities as the COVID-19 lockdown is lifted.
Answered by Baroness Goldie
Face-to-face cadet activity has been suspended since 17 March but a significant effort by adult volunteers to engage cadets in virtual activities has resulted in around 70% of units participating online. This important action is being taken to retain the engagement of young people and adult volunteers and to prepare for when normal cadet activities recommence.
Planning is currently underway across the cadet forces for a gradual step-by-step return to face-to-face cadet activity in line with Government guidance on easing COVID-19 restrictions. The Service cadet organisations are ready to support cadet units returning to normal cadet activity when it is right to do so.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how they have been monitoring the effectiveness of measures set out in the guidance on helping children with special educational needs and disabilities to continue their education during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
The government is committed to supporting local authorities and their partners to ensure children with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) continue their education during the COVID-19 outbreak.
We have published a range of guidance for education settings, local authorities, health commissioning bodies and families, and are monitoring the effectiveness of measures through:
We will continue to work with education settings, local authorities, health commissioning bodies and a range of stakeholders to keep the effectiveness of measures in our guidance under close review.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what responsibilities and duties schools have specifically towards pupils who develop eating disorders; and what assessment they have made of the effectiveness of support offered by schools to pupils with eating disorders.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
When carrying out duties to safeguard children and young people, schools must have due regard to the statutory guidance, ‘Keeping children safe in education’, which defines safeguarding and promotes the welfare of children. The guidance is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/keeping-children-safe-in-education--2.
Governing bodies of maintained schools, academies (except 16–19 academies) and pupil referral units are also subject to a duty to support pupils with medical conditions. In meeting the duty, schools must follow statutory guidance, which is available at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/supporting-pupils-at-school-with-medical-conditions--3.
The department’s mental health and behaviour advice includes information about how to identify pupils whose behaviour may be a result of an underlying mental health difficulty, linked to the SEND graduated response process, and provides guidance on how they can adapt their approaches to support these pupils with their individual needs.
It is vital that children and young people with eating disorders have access to effective specialist support. Through the NHS Long Term Plan, we are investing £2.3 billion a year into mental health services by 2023-24, which will see spending for children and young people’s mental health services growing faster than the overall spend on mental health, which will itself be growing faster than the overall NHS budget. The NHS Long Term Plan also makes a specific commitment to boost investment in children and young people’s eating disorder services over the five years of the plan.
Inpatient treatment should be a last resort, which is why the government announced in 2014 that it would invest £150 million to expand eating disorder community-based care. We are making good progress on this promise, and as a result 70 dedicated new or extended community services are now either open or in development.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether COVID-19 contact tracing, if widely applied, will also extend to school-aged children.
Answered by Lord Bethell
The Government is developing a new test and trace programme. This will bring together an app, expanded web and phone-based contact tracing, and swab testing for those with potential COVID-19 symptoms. This programme will play an important role in helping to minimise the spread of COVID-19 in the future, including for school-aged children.
The programme will include more traditional methods of contact tracing if a child, parent or guardian test positive. This could include, for example, direct discussion with parents and schools on recent contacts. The Government has recruited 21,000 contact tracers to support contact tracing and will recruit more if needed. They will play an important part in tracing the contacts of those with COVID-19, including school-aged children.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of COVID-19 on the delivery of free schools in the pre-opening stage.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
We are monitoring closely the risk that construction delays caused by COVID-19 might impact on our capacity to deliver free schools, including special free schools, planning to open in September 2020.
Where delays are putting at risk completion of sites by September, we are agreeing appropriate mitigations, including alternative temporary accommodation.
We remain committed to opening all free schools due to open this September, as planned.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how COVID-19 is affecting the delivery of new special free schools; and what steps they are taking to mitigate this impact.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
We are monitoring closely the risk that construction delays caused by COVID-19 might impact on our capacity to deliver free schools, including special free schools, planning to open in September 2020.
Where delays are putting at risk completion of sites by September, we are agreeing appropriate mitigations, including alternative temporary accommodation.
We remain committed to opening all free schools due to open this September, as planned.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department of Health and Social Care:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many young people with special needs who, although they need continuing social care support, were not transferred to Adult Services within six months of turning 18 years old, in 2019.
Answered by Lord Bethell
This information is not centrally held.
Whilst the Short and Long Term Services (SALT) collection contains information on the number of requests for support relating to transferring to the care of adult social care services, we do not collect data around delays, needs or exact age.
The SALT collection relates to the social care activity of councils with adult social services responsibilities in England.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Ministry of Justice:
To ask Her Majesty's Government how many Special Educational Needs and Disability Tribunal hearings were cancelled for the second or subsequent time in the 2019 calendar year.
Answered by Lord Keen of Elie
I have to advise the Noble Lord that this information could only be obtained at disproportionate cost. The next release of data will be the Tribunals Quarterly Statistics on 11 June 2020 which will provide information from January to March 2020 and can be found at this address: https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/tribunals-statistics.
Asked by: Lord Lingfield (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to protect teaching and non-teaching staff from COVID-19 when schools re-open.
Answered by Baroness Berridge
The school workforce is central to the country’s response to COVID-19 and we thank them wholeheartedly for their support at this difficult time.
As a result of the huge efforts everyone has made to adhere to strict social distancing measures, the transmission rate of coronavirus (COVID-19) has decreased. We therefore anticipate, with further progress, that we may be able, from the week commencing 1 June, to welcome back more children to early years, school and further education settings. We will only do this provided that the five key tests set by government justify the changes at the time.
A range of actions will be taken to prevent transmission of the virus, including protective measures to minimise contact and mixing. Public Health England is clear that if early years settings, schools and colleges implement these measures, and crucially if they are also applying regular hand washing, hygiene and cleaning measures and handling potential cases of the virus as per advice, then the risk of transmission will be lowered.
We have published guidance for education and childcare settings on how to implement protective measures, which is available at: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/coronavirus-covid-19-implementing-protective-measures-in-education-and-childcare-settings.
Access to testing is already available to essential workers, including all school staff.
These are rapidly developing circumstances. We continue to keep the situation under review and will keep Parliament updated accordingly.