Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what action they intend to take, if any, in the next Spending Review to ensure that councils can continue to meet their statutory duties towards those with Special Educational Needs and Disabilities.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We recognise that high needs budgets are under pressure and that is why we allocated an additional £250 million in high needs funding for 2018-19 and 2019-20 in December. This brings the total allocation for high needs this year to £6.3 billion.
My right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer has announced that the government will hold a Spending Review alongside the Budget where spending plans beyond 2019-20 will be agreed. The government will need to balance competing priorities across a broad range of areas, but we will be taking careful account of the importance of providing the right funding for education, and for high needs in particular. My right hon. Friend, the Secretary of State for Education has made clear that as we approach the next Spending Review, he will back head teachers to ensure they have the resources they need to deliver a world class education.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to extend the expiry date of apprenticeship levy funds beyond April 2019 for employers who have been unable to use that levy against standards (1) which have only recently been approved, (2) which are still in development, and (3) for which they cannot find a local provider.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Levy-paying employers have up to 24 months from the point at which funds enter their account in which to spend the funds available to them. The 24 month expiry period is designed to give employers time to develop their apprenticeship programmes whilst encouraging employers to take action to create new apprenticeship opportunities. Funds will only expire in May 2019 if an employer has spent less on apprenticeship training and assessment in the past 2 years than the amount that went into their account in May 2017. We currently have no plans to extend the expiry period.
In early 2018, the Institute for Apprenticeships and Technical Education began its ‘Faster and Better’ programme to simplify aspects of the development of standards and to focus on reducing the time taken for standards to be approved. There are now over 400 apprenticeship standards available across all levels.
In the Budget 2018, my right hon. Friend, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, announced £5 million of funding to support improved development of new standards and work to improve the training market. £1.5 million of funding was allocated in 2019/20 to a project focussing on how we can help employers and providers to improve and, where necessary, expand training provision.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have to review funding levels for early entitlements to ensure that childcare providers are able to continue providing high quality early education.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We will be spending around £6 billion on childcare support in 2019-20 – a record amount. That will include funding for our early education entitlements, on which we plan to spend around £3.5 billion this year alone.
Our average funding rates are based on the department’s ‘Review of Childcare Costs’ (attached) which was described as “thorough and wide ranging” by the National Audit Office. The review looked at both current and future cost pressures.
The government recognises the need to keep the evidence base on costs up to date. We continue to monitor the provider market closely through a range of regular and one-off research projects which provide insight into various aspects of the provider market.
Future spending decisions will be a matter for the Spending Review.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure that children's nurseries are able to recruit and retain sufficient qualified staff practitioners to provide high quality early education to all children.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
We are committed to ensuring that all children have access to high quality early education and can achieve their full potential. The latest Ofsted data confirms that 95% of providers are now rated good and outstanding, up from 68% in 2010.
In March 2017, we published the attached early years workforce strategy which outlined government's plans to support employers to attract, retain and develop early years staff to deliver high quality provision. This can be accessed at:
https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/early-years-workforce-strategy.
As a result of the strategy, we have worked with sector stakeholders to develop criteria for new, more robust level 2 qualifications, as well as developing new career pathways information to support careers advice, recruitment and staff development. This can be accessed at: https://www.cache.org.uk/media/1417/dfe-career-pathway-map-v17.pdf. The information is also attached.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what steps they are taking to ensure the sustainability of maintained nursery schools; and what assessment they have made of any additional costs faced by those nurseries as a result of the additional statutory responsibilities placed on them when compared to other early years settings.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Maintained nursery schools (MNS) make a valuable contribution to improving the lives of some of our most disadvantaged children. They experience costs that other providers do not, and we are providing local authorities with around £60 million a year in supplementary funding to enable them to protect MNS funding.
This arrangement is due to end in March 2020, and what happens after that will be determined by the next Spending Review. Owing to uncertainty over the exact date of the Spending Review, we are considering how best to handle transitional arrangements for a number of areas, including MNS.
To ensure that decisions are evidence-based, we have commissioned research to explore in detail the costs that MNS experience. That research will be published soon.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the Isos Partnership interim research for the Local Government Association which shows that councils face a minimum projected shortfall of £536 million in the support they provide for children with special educational needs and disabilities in England by 2018–19.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Nationally, funding for children with complex special educational needs and disabilities (SEND) has risen by £1 billion since 2013 to 2014, to just under £6 billion in 2018 to 2019, and will rise to over £6 billion in 2019 to 2020.
We are aware of local authorities reporting concerns about the costs of supporting children with SEND. We are monitoring local authority spending decisions in this area and are keeping under review the overall amount of funding for this support.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what plans they have, if any, to allocate additional funding to children’s services.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
Autumn Budget 2018 made £410 million available to local authorities, in 2019/20, for adult and children social care. The government also announced £84 million in targeted, evidence-based interventions which will transform services to reduce demand, saving money for local authorities but most importantly, improving the quality of services for our most vulnerable children.
The government will continue to work closely with the sector and other government departments to consider long-term children’s services funding as part of the upcoming spending review.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government what percentage of exempt academies have not voluntarily signed up to the School Food Standards.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
The government encourages all schools to promote healthy eating and provide healthy, tasty and nutritious food and drink.
Compliance with the School Food Standards is mandatory for the majority of schools, including all maintained schools. Academies and free schools are required to comply with the standards by virtue of their funding agreements, with the exception of a proportion that we expect to comply voluntarily. All new academies and free schools have mandatory compliance specified in their funding agreements by default, and when these agreements are updated, we will seek to include this.
To date, over 1400 exempt academies have indicated they are following the School Food Standards voluntarily.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether they intend to ensure that any Apprenticeship Levy underspend is retained in the areas where it is raised, in order to address local skills gaps.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
There are no plans to ring fence any funds for specific areas. This would prevent employers in higher demand areas that are currently developing apprenticeship programmes from accessing available funds.
We are working with providers so that apprenticeships meet employers’ skills needs and support productivity across the country.
Asked by: Lord Porter of Spalding (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty's Government whether any assessment has been made of the effectiveness of the operating models of social care trusts in relation to improving local children’s services.
Answered by Lord Agnew of Oulton
A small proportion of local councils have arrangements whereby some or the entirety of their service is run at arms’ length from the council, through a children’s services trust, including some that are in intervention. In two of these councils, Doncaster and Slough, the department established an independent trust after children’s social care services were found to be systemically and persistently inadequate.
An evaluation of Doncaster Children’s Services Trust shows it was viewed favourably by its staff and has had a positive affect on culture and practice: the investment in staff, quality assurance and the way that the Trust communicates its work has led to a shift in culture. This has led to improved staff morale, workforce stability and some practice improvements. For example, the use of agency workers and staff turnover has reduced; and staff reported spending more time with children and families. However, it is too early to determine whether these changes will result in sustained improvements for children and families. An evaluation of Slough Children’s Services Trust is in progress.
Other alternative operating models are being tested by councils who are not in intervention. For example, ‘Achieving for Children’ (AfC) is a social enterprise company, set up and jointly owned by two councils, Richmond-upon-Thames and Kingston-upon-Thames. It has recently been funded by the Department for Education to expand to three more councils, the first of which is Windsor and Maidenhead, who joined in August 2017. A Department for Education review, published in 2016, into the establishment of AfC suggested that the main benefits of its creation were: better service quality; better staff engagement; higher levels of innovation; better recruitment and retention; and savings from the combining of services across the two local councils and the development of alternative revenue streams.
The department is keen to broaden the developing evidence base on the potential of alternative delivery models to bring better outcomes for local councils. We are funding four projects to explore this through its ‘Innovation Programme’, and will be evaluating their efficacy.