Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government, following allegations of pressure to shut down human rights research at Sheffield Hallam University, what plans they have to investigate foreign interference in and attempts to influence the nature and purpose of academic research projects.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The department is clear that foreign interference is unacceptable, and higher education providers are already required to ensure that decisions are taken without direction, coercion or covert influence. Wherever it is identified, the government and the Office for Students (OfS) can and will act, using a range of existing and upcoming requirements.
The government conducted an internal review informed by engagement with the regulator, the sector and academics impacted by foreign interference. It concluded that whilst there were a range of existing requirements on universities that protected against foreign interference, more should be done to support providers to proportionately mitigate risk. We set out our considerations in the “Future of the Higher Education (Freedom of Speech) Act” policy paper published in June 2025, and are taking steps to share good practice, raise awareness and develop new responses where necessary.
This work, along with the implementation and evaluation of the Foreign Influence Registration Scheme, bolsters the existing layers of protection offered by the OfS and the National Security Act. We take this very seriously and will continue to keep our response under review, including considering these recent allegations, to ensure it remains effective and proportionate.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many (1) graduate recruitments, and (2) apprentice recruitments, there have been in (a) England, (b) Wales, (c) Scotland, and (d) Northern Ireland, in each year since 2020.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The exact data requested is not held by the department, but we publish data on the number and proportion of first degree graduates and apprenticeship achievers that are in sustained employment at around one year after graduation, for UK-domiciled graduates graduating from English higher education providers only and apprentices achieving their qualification in England. The latest available data is for learners qualifying in 2020/21 who were in sustained employment in the 2022/23 tax year. More recent data is unavailable due to lags in data availability.
Number in sustained employment at 1 year after graduation | |||
Graduated in academic year: | 2018/19 | 2019/20 | 2020/21 |
First Degree Graduates | 241,000 | 244,000 | 255,000 |
Apprenticeship Achievers | 170,000 | 134,000 | 129,000 |
These statistics are available in the following publications:
The data is also available at the following linked tables derived from those publications:
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what is their policy on supporting education in the medium of Welsh for pupils living in England.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The government recognises the cultural and linguistic importance of the Welsh language, which is reflected in the provision of Welsh-medium teaching for pupils living in Wales. In England, there is no requirement for schools to provide education through the medium of Welsh. However, schools have the flexibility to support pupils who speak Welsh or wish to learn the language.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government whether they plan to extend the £10,000 tax free bursary available to trainee art and design teachers, so that it is also available to trainee music teachers.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
Earlier this year, the department announced an initial teacher training financial incentives package for the 2025/26 recruitment cycle worth £233 million, which is a £37 million increase on the last cycle. This includes a £10,000 tax free bursary to encourage trainees to teach music.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what assessment they have made of the impact of the lowering of the threshold for employers' national insurance payments in the Autumn budget on the provision of daily school transport for children with special educational needs, and whether they will make an exception to ensure the continuation of those services.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
I refer the noble Lord to the answer of 16 December 2024 to Question 19397.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how much financial support has been provided to schools for the promotion of chess in each of the last three years.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
In the 2023/24 financial year, the department allocated £200,000 through the Strengthening Chess in Primary Schools grant, supporting primary schools to improve their pupils’ access to chess.
More broadly, at the Autumn Budget 2024, the government announced an additional £2.3 billion for mainstream schools and young people with high needs for the 2025/26 financial year, compared to 2024/25. This means that overall core school funding will total almost £63.9 billion next year.
Each year schools receive core funding from the department to cover their expenditures. These expenditures could include teacher salaries, school lunches, electronic resources, art and craft supplies, or any other number of items.
It is for headteachers to decide how best to manage their budgets, including spending on the promotion of extracurricular activities such as chess. This funding is not ringfenced.
Schools may also choose to utilise their pupil premium funding to support enrichment. The pupil premium grant is funding to improve educational outcomes for disadvantaged pupils in state-funded schools in England. Schools must use this funding in line with the menu of approaches which are based on the evidence of how best to improve attainment for disadvantaged pupils. This includes the flexibility to use pupil premium to tackle non-academic barriers to success, including providing enrichment opportunities to benefit those pupils who may not be able to have access otherwise.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many higher education institutions in England offer courses in (1) mathematics, (2) music and (3) both.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA), now part of the Joint Information Systems Committee (Jisc), collects and publishes data on student enrolments across all UK higher education (HE) providers. This includes data on full person equivalents enrolled in different subject areas, categorised using the HE coding of subjects system. Counts of enrolments across all subjects from 2019/20 to 2022/23 are published in Table 49 of HESA’s Student Data, which can be found here: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/students/table-49.
Table 49 can be used to determine that in the 2022/23 academic year, there were 31,030 HE enrolments in ‘mathematics’ across 75 English HE providers and 31,405 HE enrolments in ‘music’ across 106 English HE providers. There were 58 HE providers in England that had enrolments in both ‘mathematics’ and ‘music’ in 2022/23.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many pupils sat A level examinations in music in 2015 and 2023.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Education is a devolved matter, and the response outlines the information for England only.
The numbers of entries in A level music in the 2014/15 and 2022/23 academic years are published by the department in the ‘A level and other 16 to 18 results’ statistical release. There were 6,709 A level music entries in 2014/15 and 4,911 A level music entries in 2022/23
These numbers include all A level entries by students aged 16 to 18 in England in that academic year.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government what consideration they have given to reversing the UK’s decision to end participation in the EU’s Erasmus plus programme.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
Following their meeting in Brussels on 2 October, the President of the European Commission and my right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister, have agreed to strengthen the relationship between the EU and UK, putting it on a more solid, stable footing.
My right hon. Friend, the Prime Minister and the President of the European Commission met again on 7 November at the European Political Community summit in Budapest, where they discussed the strength of the UK-EU partnership and the need to work together to tackle the challenges facing Europe.
The department is working with the higher education sector to ensure our world leading universities continue to attract the best and brightest and support our economy, however we have no plans for rejoining the Erasmus scheme.
Asked by: Lord Wigley (Plaid Cymru - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask His Majesty's Government how many students were undertaking undergraduate degree courses at universities in England, at the most recent date for which figures are available, whose home addresses were in (1) Wales, (2) Scotland, and (3) Northern Ireland.
Answered by Baroness Smith of Malvern - Minister of State (Department for Work and Pensions)
The Higher Education Statistics Agency (HESA – now part of JISC), is responsible for collecting and publishing data about UK higher education. The latest statistics refer to the 2022/23 academic year.
Figure 9 of HESA’s ‘Higher Education Student Statistics: UK, 2022/23’ reports the number of enrolments for UK providers based on student permanent address prior to study between the academic years 2018/19 and 2022/23 and is available by students’ study level. Figure 9 can be accessed at: https://www.hesa.ac.uk/data-and-analysis/sb269/figure-9.
It is possible to filter the figures in the table to undergraduate degrees in English universities by setting the ‘Country of HE provider’ drop-down menu to ‘England’, and the ‘Level of study’ drop-down menu to ‘All undergraduate’.