Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what steps they are taking to implement the recommendations of the Children's Commissioner, made on 4 January, that the rights of children online are upheld, including through the creation of a digital ombudsman and the inclusion of digital citizenship in the national curriculum.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Department welcomes the work of the Children’s Commissioner on this important area. We will carefully consider this report as part of our ongoing work to make the internet a safer place for children.
The Department for Education is part of the UK Council for Child Internet Safety (UKCCIS), a group of more than 200 organisations established in 2010 drawn from across government, industry, law enforcement, academia, parenting and charity sectors which work in partnership to keep children safe online. The group is chaired by three Government ministers: the Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Sport, Tourism and Heritage, the Minister for Vulnerability, Safeguarding and Countering Extremism and the Minister of State for Vulnerable Children and Families.
UKCCIS has produced advice for schools and colleges on responding to incidents of sexting and guidance for school governors to help them support their school leaders to keep children safe online. Other UKCCIS achievements include the roll-out of free, family-friendly ISP level filters and the deployment of friendly Wi-Fi filtering in public spaces.
All schools are required to teach a balanced and broadly based curriculum that promotes the spiritual, moral, cultural, mental and physical development of pupils, and prepares them for the opportunities, responsibilities and experiences of later life. Maintained schools have to follow the new National Curriculum, which, from September 2014 has focused on essential knowledge, allowing teachers and schools to use their professional judgement to ensure the school curriculum meets the needs of their pupils. The computing curriculum covers e-safety at all four Key Stages, and was developed with input from e-safety experts including Childnet, NSPCC and the UK Safer Internet Centre. There is progression in the content across the four Key Stages to reflect the different and escalating risks that young people face as they get older.
However, this is only part of the wider school curriculum. Schools have more freedom to teach subjects or topics, such as digital citizenship, beyond the prescribed curriculum to ensure that children receive a rounded education. Teachers also have access to a wide range of high quality resources produced by experts including advice published by the PSHE Association, the Sex Education Forum, and Brook. These address changes in technology and legislation since 2000, in particular equipping teachers to help protect children and young people from inappropriate online content, and from online bullying, harassment and exploitation.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government how many secondary schools in England are presently without a head teacher; and what action they are taking to improve the recruitment and retention of head teachers.
Answered by Lord Nash
The latest published data shows that in November 2015, 0.3% of secondary schools in England had a vacant head teacher post.
The Government recognises that excellent leadership, together with high-quality teaching, is essential to improving pupil outcomes, thereby improving social mobility. We are committed to ensuring that there is a supply of high quality leaders in our schools and, whilst the recruitment and retention of head teachers is primarily a matter for governing bodies, we are supporting the system to develop and train the next generation of strong leaders and build leadership capacity.
To do this, we have introduced a variety of measures, including: funding targeted programmes that aim to bolster the leadership pipeline where need is greatest, such as the High Potential Middle and Senior Leaders programmes; reforming the National Professional Qualifications for school leadership to set out the skills and knowledge needed to prepare leaders more effectively for the full range of leadership roles in the new schools system, and introducing new arrangements for leadership pay in 2014 to give schools greater flexibility to attract and retain strong leadership teams.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what is their assessment of the reasons for the UK's static position over the last three years, and in particular its decline in the maths ratings, with reference to the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment results for 2015.
Answered by Lord Nash
The Government is committed to raising standards in mathematics to reflect the best practice in the world. In the OECD’s Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) 2015, 15 year olds in the UK perform at the OECD average in mathematics. Although the UK dropped one place in the PISA rankings for mathematics since 2012 – from 26th to 27th – five more countries took part in the study and the UK’s score of 494 remained the same from 2012 to 2015.
We continue to reform our primary and secondary curriculum and standards. The first cohort is due to take the new GCSEs in mathematics next summer. The pupils who sat the 2015 PISA assessment in England were born around the year 2000 and have experienced little of the changes introduced since 2010, and virtually none of the reforms in primary education.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action they are taking to prevent discrimination against the UK's Sikh community, in the light of the UK Sikh Survey 2016 which revealed that almost one fifth of Sikhs encountered discrimination in a public place in the last year.
Answered by Lord Nash
Discrimination against someone because of their race or religion is abhorrent and has no place in modern society.
We are rightly proud that British anti-discrimination law is among the strongest in the world. The Equality Act 2010 provides legal protection against both direct and indirect discrimination because of a range of protected characteristics, including a person’s race and their religious beliefs. Domestic case-law has determined that Sikhs are protected as both a racial and a religious group.
Anyone who feels that they have been unlawfully discriminated against should contact the Equality Advisory and Support Service. That is a free, Government-sponsored helpline that advises and assists individuals on issues relating to equality and human rights, across England, Scotland and Wales.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the number of UK nationals who speak a second language fluently; what strategy they have to improve foreign language skills in the UK; and what estimate they have made of the cost to the economy per year in lost trade resulting from the lack of foreign language skills.
Answered by Lord Nash
The 2011 Census does not include information about the number of UK nationals who speak a second language fluently. However, it shows that 7.7% of the population had a main language other than English.
Studying a language provides an opening to other cultures and is important to prepare students to compete in a global jobs market. A 2013 report by Cardiff Business School, ‘The Costs to the UK of Language Deficiencies as a Barrier to UK Engagement in Exporting’, estimated that the gross costs of language ignorance might have been 3.5% of national income in 2006 - £48 billion.
The Government is committed to increasing the proportion of the population gaining language qualifications. Thanks to the English Baccalaureate (EBacc), the number of students studying a language at GCSE has increased from 40% in 2010 to 49% in 2016. In August, we confirmed that EBacc entry would become a headline measure in school performance tables from this year, alongside EBacc achievement. This will encourage schools to enter more pupils for the EBacc and for languages in future, which should increase the pool of potential people studying languages at A level and beyond.
The Higher Education and Research Bill, currently before Parliament, contains provisions that would allow Government to direct public funding to protect the supply of strategically or economically important subjects at university, such as modern foreign languages.
Asked by: Marquess of Lothian (Conservative - Life peer)
Question to the Department for Education:
To ask Her Majesty’s Government what action, if any, they plan to take as a result of the recent report of the Association of Teachers and Lecturers that 40 per cent of teachers in the UK have experienced violence from pupils in the past year.
Answered by Lord Nash
The government has already taken steps to empower teachers to tackle poor pupil behaviour in schools. We have extended teachers’ searching powers; allowed them to impose same-day detentions; and clarified their power to use reasonable force. In 2014, we updated our advice on pupil behaviour to make clear the range of sanctions it is permissible to use in order to manage poor behaviour. We also produced a range of case studies showing good practice and issued separate advice for schools to help teachers identify and support pupils whose behaviour may be related to an unmet mental health or special educational need.
The Teacher Voice Omnibus survey, a nationally representative survey of teachers in England, found that 76 per cent of teachers say that behaviour in schools is ‘good or better’ compared to 70 per cent in 2008. However, we recognise that poor behaviour is still a problem in some schools. On 16 June 2015, the Secretary of State appointed the behaviour expert, Tom Bennett, to lead a behaviour review to ensure new teachers are fully trained in dealing with disruptive children and to consider all of the challenges of managing behaviour in the 21st century.
To complement this review, Tom Bennett will lead a further review of behaviour management in schools with a particular focus on leadership, culture and systems used to tackle disruptive behaviour.